


Order and Maintenance

by The_Female_Gaymer



Series: Sun and Moon [1]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Accidental Voyeurism, Aftercare, Anal Fingering, Anger, Angst, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Awkward Tension, Banishment, Battle, Begging, Bigotry & Prejudice, Biting, Blindfolds, Blood, Blood Loss, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Blood and Violence, Bondage, Broken Bones, Burns, Comfort Sex, Coming Untouched, Creampie, Depression, Developing Relationship, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Enemies to Friends, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Estrangement, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, Fingerfucking, First Time, Flashbacks, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Gore, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Isolation, Jealousy, Light Angst, Light Bondage, Loss of Identity, Loss of Limbs, Love Triangles, Masturbation, Mental Breakdown, Mirror Sex, Moral Lessons, Multi, Naked Cuddling, Night Terrors, Nightmares, Nipple Play, Oral Sex, Panic Attacks, Polyamory, Post-Blind Betrayal, Power Armor makes for a great shield, Praise Kink, Pre-Blind Betrayal, Pre-Relationship, Racism, Reconciliation, Recovery, Revelations, Rough Sex, Self-Harm, Self-Hatred, Separation Anxiety, Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Smut, Suicide Attempt, Teasing, Threats, Touch-Starved, Unrequited Love, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, Violence, Voice Kink, Wall Sex, War, Wire Play, radiation poisoning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-19
Updated: 2017-11-14
Packaged: 2018-12-31 13:27:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 32
Words: 185,907
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12133488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Female_Gaymer/pseuds/The_Female_Gaymer
Summary: After catching Paladin Danse in a private moment, Sole Survivor Kori Farnsworth decides to offer the handsome BOS soldier a proposition once the Prydwen arrives in the Commonwealth. Eager to learn from what the pre-war woman has to offer, Danse agrees.It may have been the biggest and best mistake he would ever make, as their relationship as friends with benefits pulls Danse towards her misfit friends, towards Kori (in less than desirable romantic ways as a BOS Paladin), and in the end, towards himself.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, so for the record, this was _supposed_ to be porn without plot, just a couple drabbles of Danse getting dommed the fuck out of...
> 
> And then I started developing feelings and started daydreaming about how Danse and the SS would grow close over the course of their travels, how Danse would support the Sole Survivor through all of the bullshit of finding her son (and the tragedy that resulted from the answers), how he would come to terms with her weird band of merry men (and women), how he would come to see them as his own friends and family, but mostly... it's just about Danse finding his humanity. About finding himself, and figuring what he wants for _himself_ for once in his life, instead of listening to what others want.
> 
> So that's what this is. As of making this note, this fic is still a WIP, so uploads of chapters will likely be staggered in order to give me time to finish chugging out the rest of the chapters (and believe me, this one is gonna be a long one).

Sole survivor Kori Farnsworth hadn’t meant to stumble across Paladin Danse’s room when the door just happened to be a crack open and he just happened to have his hand around his cock.

Scratch that: she had. Sort of. Kori was returning to the Cambridge Police Station to report a successful Feral Ghoul eradication mission to Rhys, but it was later in the evening, meaning the Brotherhood members would likely be in the rooms they’d claimed for themselves. Earlier that day, Danse had been raving about the Prydwen’s upcoming arrival to the Commonwealth, but Kori had been too focused on the thought of finding her son to pay much attention. Now that it was later in the evening and she was tired and run down, she couldn’t help but think of the glitter in his puppy-like eyes as he informed the crew that their beloved ship was on the way. They responded positively, but the meeting was quick, and soon the Paladin had been left alone. At that point was when she had decided to approach him and offer her company, to which he agreed excitedly, and the two had gone outside the police station to sharpen up their shooting skills.

Now, as she stared into Danse’s chosen room, she licked her lips as she noticed those same puppy eyes dark and endless, hyper-focused on the task at hand as he slowly stroked his cock. A shudder ran through his broad shoulders as a drop of precum beaded at the head of his cock, and he swiped a thumb over it with a throaty groan.

God, was that a sight to behold. She had to adjust the fabric around her crotch to give herself more breathing room, the space between her legs quickly growing hot and humid. Danse was a man chiseled from marble, unbreakable and infallible, from the short time she had spent with him on the field. He was focused, and loyal as all hell to his cause, but also held concern for the small woman if she ever was injured.

But to see him like this, now, vulnerable and open, felt like something forbidden, like an apple from the Garden of Eden. And she wanted a bite.

Watching Danse with little worry of being caught was a treat in of itself, but Kori was taken by pleasant surprise when Danse stuck a finger in his mouth, and snaked it down between his spread legs, pressing tentatively into his hole. He threw his head back, opened his mouth, and _whined_ as he crooked his finger, and his cock gave a needy jolt.

Kori _had_ to have him. She _had_ to. And she knew just how to approach him.

 

* * *

 

“Paladin Danse.”

“Initiate Kori.”

Kori ran into Danse as he was moving the remaining crates of ammunition and weaponry to the roof of the police station for pick-up and transportation once the Prydwen finally arrived in the Commonwealth. The task was made easy with his Power Armor, which Kori never saw him out of save for when he was in his room with the door closed. Or, rather, when he _thought_ the door was closed. He sounded pleased to have her company as he worked, and did not ask for any assistance. Speaking with her seemed to be enough.

“Permission to speak freely?” Kori inquired, sticking close behind him as he transferred crates around the roof, apparently uncertain where the best place to put them would be.

“Go ahead,” Danse replied, setting down a crate of 10 mm containers.

Kori cleared her throat. “Paladin Danse, I’ve been noticing… well, I _did_ notice… that you seem to be in need of some personal attention.”

“Personal attention?” Danse frowned, and looked down at Kori from over the edge of the torso of his armor. “I’m afraid I don’t understand what you mean.”

“Oh? Well… permission to speak _more_ freely then? On a very casual level.”

The Paladin narrowed his eyes. “Permission granted.”

Kori smirked. “The door to your room doesn’t close all the way, Danse.”

At first, Danse just narrowed his eyes in confusion, and pursed his lips as he thought long and hard about Kori’s words. A minute or so later, he froze in the middle of carrying a box, and his ears and cheeks flushed pink as the implications of Kori's words hit him. “Oh.” he said dumbly, stumbling a little as he finished transferring the box to the rest of the growing pile. “Initiate Kori, I sincerely apologize for anything… inappropriate… you may have seen passing through the halls of the Police Station--”

“Everyone has needs,” the vault dweller replied, waving off the apology dismissively. Still, there was a crinkle to her eyes that Danse didn’t know how to feel about. “It was only one night, but the next day, I checked it out-- the handle mechanism is loose and busted on your door. I doubt that thing’s ever shut properly since even before the day you got here. But also…”

Danse placed metal hands on metal hips, licking his dry lips. “But..?”

Kori made a show of looking flustered herself-- opening and closing her mouth, averting eye contact, and laughing nervously and turning away. “Sorry, I just… I couldn’t help but notice… I don’t know, you seemed… like you could have used a hand.”

The Paladin’s face went bright red, and he barked out, “Soldier, I can assure you, I am more than capable of handling my… my own equipment.”

“Oh, I wasn’t saying you weren’t,” Kori cut in quickly, “not at all, and, really, I didn’t mean to stare for as long as I did… you’re very attractive, you know… No, what I meant was, you know how to make yourself feel good, but have you ever… has anyone else ever shown you pleasure..?”

She half wondered if Danse had even heard her-- he swayed as if blood was rushing through his head, leaving him dizzy and breathless. He chewed on his lip for a moment, before replying uncertainly, “Why… why does that matter? Whatever you saw, I’m sure it’s… not related or important to that fact.”

“Well, actually,” Kori replied, taking a few tentative steps towards Danse. She took it as a good sign that he didn’t retreat and held his ground, meaning he was listening, at the very least. “Actually, I saw how you were pleasuring yourself, and… I know some more… effective methods. Better, more pleasurable methods.”

The Paladin stuttered. “Is this coming from you pre-war knowledge, Soldier?” Danse inquired, arching an eyebrow.

“It is,” she confirmed with a nod of her head. Danse knew she was a vault dweller: she had even taken him to it, after being asked to do so, but had refused to step into the Cryogenic Stasis chamber. Upon being asked why, she went rigidly still, and merely replied: “ _It cuts too deep._ ”

Danse narrowed his eyes again, hands on his hips. “Okay. What if, hypothetically, I _was_ interested in learning from what you have to offer?”

Kori grinned inwardly. _Gotcha_ . “Well then, hypothetically,” Kori explained, “we would arrange a time and a place to meet, I would give a run-down of what I want or expect, and you would do the same… _maybe_ have a practice round--”

“Practice round?” Danse looked like he was going to melt into his armor.

“Well, yeah,” Kori said with a shrug. “The best learning is done via demonstration. Besides… there are some things I have to teach you that would involve at _least_ two partners.”

The Paladin was truly sweating now, and helpless to do anything about it from within his Power Armor. He paced a bit, back and forth in front of Kori, the whir of machinery a constant between them. Then, he sighed, and turned back to her.

“And what if, hypothetically, we get there, and I change my mind?”

“Then I leave. No question, no hesitation. You say no, I don’t ask why. I just listen. And we never have to address it again. It can be like it never happened.”

Danse stared at Kori, looked her up and down, before, after a long period of silence, returned to moving the crates around the Police Station roof. At first, Kori thought that was the end of it-- that his “hypothetical” question had been a real one, and that he had already made up his mind. She was about to shrug it off, give herself a gold star for trying, and then--

“The Prydwen arrives within the next week or two to the Commonwealth. I know for a damn _fact_ the door to my room closes _and_ locks there. I will come to you when I am… when I feel like it is an opportune time to… discuss this potential arrangement further.”

Kori had to give everything she had not to beam in front of the clearly still nervous Paladin; appearing over-excited could ruin the tentative trust Danse was giving her now. Honestly, she was somewhat surprised that he was so readily agreeing in the first place. Surely, there had to be _some_ rule against fraternization, but she wasn't about to question it. “Sounds like a plan,” she replied. “I’ll be here when the Prydwen arrives.”

“You’d better be,” Danse said, relaxing a bit. “If anyone’s going to give you a tour of the ship, it ought to be your sponsor. But don’t anticipate us getting time to meet the very first day-- chances are, I’ll be the one moving all these crates… again.”

“I may be too tired myself,” Kori confessed. “I may have found someone who can help me track down my son. I intend on sticking with them for the next while.”

“And who might this ‘someone’ be, Initiate?” Danse inquired.

Kori pursed her lips, deciding to be as vague as possible. Danse didn’t yet know most of the residents of Diamond City, and she knew for certain he didn’t know about Nick. The longer she could keep it that way, the better, given that he was a Synth. A very… obvious one, at that. “A… detective. In Diamond City.”

“A detective would be perfect in helping you narrow down your search.” He softened, and gave the vault dweller a gentle smile. “Well, I wish you luck. We’ll speak again soon. Oh, and… be safe out there, Initiate.”

Kori turned, and began to walk away. “Safety doesn’t exist in the Commonwealth, Danse. The safety you know comes nowhere close to what once was.”

“Regardless… keep your head _attached_ to your body.”

 

 

* * *

 

 

When Kori returned next, it was the same day the Prydwen arrived, a week and a half later. Just as she had promised. She looked haggard, run down. Exhausted. Angry, even. Danse truly didn’t know what to say to her, when he first saw her like that. But the moment she realized Danse’s eyes were on her, Kori straightened immediately, putting on a face and hiding her weariness in the crinkle of her smile.

The Paladin, at that point, figured it would be best to let it go unmentioned for now. Her business was her own. But as her friend, he couldn't help but be concerned.

“Cavalry’s arrived,” he said to her as she approached, offering a gentle smile to try to ease some of the tension he could feel radiating off of her in waves. “And it looks like they sent in the big guns.”

Kori snorted. “The Brotherhood isn’t exactly subtle when it makes an entrance, huh?”

Danse laughed. “There’s no reason to be subtle when you have _that_ in your arsenal. We call our ship ‘The Prydwen’. She’s loaded with enough troops and supplies to mount a major offensive. If she’s here, Elder Maxson’s here. And that means we’re going to war.”

At the mention of “war”, Kori’s expression fell, and she went back to looking exhausted and bitter. Still, she kept her tone of voice more chipper than her outward features. “Well, who’s Elder Maxson?”

“Maxson is the commander of this division of the Brotherhood of Steel. He’s the model of what every Brotherhood soldier hopes to become. If we’re going to war, I can promise you that he’ll be leading the charge. That being said, you’re about to get to know the Prydwen up close and personal. I’ve received orders that we’re both to report to her immediately.”

That caused Kori to perk up a bit, a small smirk crossing her features. A trip up to the Prydwen meant getting closer to Danse’s room, and therefore, closer to getting… well, close to Danse.

“Follow me up to the roof of the police station,” Danse commanded. “We’re going for a little ride.”

Kori smirked for the first time since she’d walked in-- a _genuine_ smirk, not something forced-- and followed the excited Paladin up the stairs.

“You’re like a little kid on Christmas,” she commented idly as she observed the bounce in his normally weighted step.

“Christmas?” Danse glanced back at her, confused.

“Oh, it’s a pre-war holiday. Kids get a bunch of presents and the best food of the entire goddamned year, while everyone celebrates the gift of giving, and being kind, yadda yadda…”

“Then I suppose this _is_ like Christmas,” Danse laughed, and opened the door to the roof. There, a Vertibird was waiting for them, engines already whining higher and higher as it prepared for liftoff. Danse clambered aboard, and then offered his hand to Kori. She accepted, and was hoisted up and positioned in front of a minigun. As the vehicle took flight, Danse spoke to her once she had on her headset.

“That minigun in front of you is loaded and ready to fire. If you spot anything hostile during the flight, I suggest you put it to good use. But make sure you properly identify your targets _before_ you start shooting. We don’t want to have any mishaps and fire on the locals.”

Kori glanced behind her at the Paladin, giving him a thumbs up, before refocusing her attention on the passing ground beneath them, and the weapon in her hands.

They flew in silence for several minutes, and the sun began to rise over the hills in the distance. When the Commonwealth was basking in its glow, Kori sighed, face falling as the extent of the war’s damage was made so much more clear to her.

“The Commonwealth looks different from up here, doesn’t it?” Danse asked her.

“It’s… certainly not how I left it,” the vault dweller replied sadly. “But at the same time, it gives me a good idea of future locations to visit, places where raiders or Super Mutants may have set up…”

Danse nodded in agreement. “It never ceases to amaze me how drastically your perception of the battlefield changes from the air. We’re gonna need that edge when we take on the Institute.”

“The Institute?” Kori’s gaze shot back to the Paladin once again, a look of surprise on her face. “Is that why the Brotherhood is here?”

“Primarily, but not singularly,” Danse replied. “They’ve already proven that they’re technologically superior, which means there’s no telling what types of weapons they have in their arsenal. Hopefully, our air superiority and tactical know-how will make the difference. Now all we have to do is find them… and I’m betting that Elder Maxson will have a plan already in place by the time we arrive.”

“Do you think the Commonwealth is going to appreciate a giant _war_ blimp having flown in declaring a message of ‘peace’ and ‘protection’?” she asked him, eyes narrowed in doubt.

“Of course not,” he replied. “I wish everyone down there believed in our cause, but they’ve been blinded by rumors and misinformation. They don’t realize that the Brotherhood of Steel is the Commonwealth’s last hope of survival. Every man, woman, and child below is in mortal danger. If we fail, it’s only a matter of time before the enemy overwhelms the entire population. Cleansing the Commonwealth is our duty, and I will gladly spill my own blood if it ensures our victory.”

He wasn’t sure what the say when Kori didn’t respond. He couldn’t see her face anymore, as she had returned to surveying the land below. Instead, Danse settled back in his Power Armor, letting the vibrations of the Vertibird soothe him like a guardian’s embrace.

Soon the Prydwen came into sight for Danse, and the Vertibird began its slow rotation on approach. “We’re on final approach to the airport. The Prydwen should be coming into view just ahead for you soon. Initiate. We’ll be meeting Lancer-Captain Kells on the flight deck. Just stick close to me, and answer all of his questions.”

The woman nodded, and leaned forwards. Both she and Danse were in awe at the sight of the gleaming metal blimp in the morning sun.

“It’s amazing that, after two hundred years, there’s a familiar piece of pre-war technology that actually makes me feel safe,” Kori wondered, and Danse smirked. He approached slowly, and clapped a hand on Kori’s shoulder.

“This is the moment when everything changes, Soldier. I hope you’re ready.”

“As ready as I’ll ever be,” she replied, looking back up at him and smiling.

Kori jumped, startled, when their Vertibird was hooked and the engines powered down. She looked up to the Paladin with worry, but he just clasped her shoulder tighter and gave her a reassuring smile. She relaxed, but not by much, as the Vertibird was lifted into the docking bay of the Prydwen. Once the vehicle was still, she and Danse hopped off, and approached a well dressed soldier along the main walkway.

“Permission to come aboard, sir?” Danse asked, and Kori assumed it was Captain Kells.

“Permission granted, and welcome back, Paladin. Allow me to be the first to congratulate you on a successful mission. And is this our new recruit?” Kells turned to address Kori, staring at her inquisitively.

“Yes sir,” Danse replied. “I’ve field promoted her to Initiate and I’d like to sponsor her entry into our rankings personally.”

“Yes, we’ve read your reports. You’ll be pleased to know that Elder Maxson approved your request, and placed the recruit in your charge.”

Kori and Danse both beamed, first at Kells, and then at each other, excited that they had been paired together, and then back to Kells. “Thank you, sir,” Danse said. “And my current orders?”

“You are to remain on the Prydwen and await further instructions.”

Oh. Kori frowned. That was no fun. Still… her mind was still set on taking the Paladin to bed, and he had said he would be most comfortable here, in his personal quarters. Maybe that was for the best.

Danse pounded a hand to his chest. “Very good, sir. Ad Victoriam, Captain.”

“Ad Victoriam, Paladin.” Kells mimicked the motion himself. Danse then took a step back, giving Kori and Kells space to speak with each other, before simply deciding to excuse himself entirely. “Initiate, I will be in the mess hall of the Prydwen, should you need me.”

“Right.” Kori nodded, and Danse walked away.

“So,” Kells began, hands placed behind his back, and he circled around so he was standing in front of Kori. “You’re the one Paladin Danse has taken under his wing. Hmph. You don’t look much like a soldier to me.”

Kori frowned. “And… what’s a soldier _supposed_ to look like?”

“A _soldier_ is supposed to be an efficient killing machine, not a relic from the past playing catch up with the rest of the world,” Kells sneered. “If Danse hadn’t stepped in and vouched for you, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation. Accepting outsiders like yourself has proven disastrous in the past.”

Kori was about to argue, but Kells continued without pause.

“But I’ve seen Paladin Danse’s reports. He seems to think you’ll make a fine addition to the Brotherhood. You might expect an endorsement like that to grant you a great deal of latitude with us, but let me make one things clear. The Brotherhood of Steel has traveled to the Commonwealth with a specific goal in mind. As the captain of this vessel, I won’t allow anyone to jeopardize our mission, no matter how valuable they think they are. Understood?”

The two narrowed their eyes at each other. “Absolutely,” Kori ground out from barely moving lips.

“Good.” Kells straightened himself, his expression relaxing. “That’s all for now, Soldier. Your orders are to proceed to the Command Deck for the address, after which Elder Maxson wishes to have a word with you. If you have any questions, ask me now. Otherwise, you’re dismissed.”

“I don’t have any questions,” Kori replied.

“Then I suggest you head over to the Command Deck immediately. Dismissed, Initiate.”

Kells did not offer Kori a salute, and she did not offer him one either. She simply parted ways quietly, and heading in the direction the captain had previously gestured to.

Upon entry into the Command Deck, Kori saw several Brotherhood soldiers already standing at attention in a great glass room. At the head was a rather young looking man in a greatcoat, and a black BOS uniform. He sported a rather large scar on his right cheek, along with a well trimmed beard and a pompadour hair cut. Cautiously, she approached the room, looking wary of the crowd, and the man at the front of them all.

“Brothers and sisters,” he began, and the vault dweller could only assume at this point that he was Elder Maxson. “The road behind has been long and fraught with difficulty. Each and every one of you has surpassed my expectations by rapidly facilitating our arrival into the Commonwealth. You have accomplished this amazing feat without a hint of purpose or direction, and most impressively, without question. Now that the ship is in position, it is time to reveal our purpose and our mission.”

Kori continued to approach, slowly, moving behind one of the rows of Brotherhood soldiers as she shimmied closer and closer to the Elder. He turned away from the crowd to survey the Commonwealth in the distance.

“Beneath the Commonwealth,” he continued, “there is a cancer known as the Institute. A malignant growth that needs to be cut before it infects the surface. They are experimenting with dangerous technologies that could prove to be the world’s undoing for the second time in recent history. The Institute scientists have created a weapon that transcends the destructive nature of the atom bomb.”

Now Kori was intrigued. Did the Brotherhood of Steel really have that kind of insider info on the Institute? And if so, how did they get it? What did they know? Elder Maxson turned back around. Everyone held their breath in anticipation.

“They call their creation… the Synth.”

And suddenly, she wasn’t interested anymore.

“... a robotic abomination of technology that is free thinking and masquerades as a human being. The notion that a machine could be granted free will is not only offensive, but horribly dangerous. And, like the atom, if it isn’t harnessed properly, it has the potential of rendering us extinct as a species. I am _not_ prepared to allow the Institute to continue this line of experimentation.”

Maxson’s eyes were cold, leveled with steely determination and confidence. “Therefore, the Institute and their Synths are considered enemies of the Brotherhood of Steel, and should be dealt with swiftly and mercilessly. This campaign will be costly, and many lives will be lost, but in the end, we will be saving humankind from its worst enemy… _itself_.”

The Brotherhood members were all nodding their heads solemnly, as if Maxson’s words were gospel. The vault dweller narrowed her eyes at them in disgust, but was jolted out of it when the Elder pounded a hand to his chest.

“Ad Victoriam!”

The rest of the members followed suit. “Ad Victoriam!” they all cried out. And, in that moment, Kori felt more of an outsider than she had during her entire time on the surface since leaving the vault. The soldiers spoke softly among themselves before dispersing out of the room. Kori watched them all go slowly, before a suddenly much calmer, smoother Maxson addressed her.

“I care about them, you know.”

Kori turned around. Maxson was looking out the window towards the Commonwealth again, hands clasped behind his back.

“The people of the Commonwealth,” he continued.

Hesitantly, she came to stand by his side. “Care about them..? I thought we were preparing for war..?”

“The Brotherhood is here to prevent a war by starting one of our own. The difference is _our_ war won’t reduce civilization to ashes.” The Elder turned to face Kori, hands still behind his back. He gazed at her both expectantly and curiously, seemingly inspecting her just by staring at her face.

“What do you want from me?” she asked of him.

“I want you to start taking responsibility for this planet.” He bore into the vault dweller with royal blue eyes. “To start making a difference. And, from what I’ve read in Paladin Danse’s reports, you’ve already begun that journey. Seeing as he’s one of my most respected field officers, you couldn’t get a better recommendation. Therefore, from this moment forward, I’m granting you the rank of Knight. And, befitting your title, we’re granting you a suit of Power Armor to protect you on the field of battle. Wear it with pride.”

The promotion certainly came as a pleasant surprise. Kori blinked rapidly, for a couple moments, before offering a grateful smile. “I’ll… do my best to live up to it,” she promised.

“I’m certain that you will.” Even Maxson smiled back, and it actually seemed so gentle, in comparison to all the other rough edges of him. “In any event, once you’ve finished becoming familiar with the Prydwen and my staff, report to the flight deck for your new orders.”

He pounded a hand to his chest. Kori mimicked the motion.

“Welcome aboard the Prydwen, soldier. Make us proud.”

Kori nodded to the Elder, before turning heel and exiting the Command Deck. She had a bit of exploring to do.

 

* * *

 

“There you are,” Danse said once Kori came into view. He marched towards her, still in his Power Armor, though it was clear he was excited to see her. It was something Kori had noticed early on in their blossoming friendship: Danse lit up whenever she was in the room. She'd observed him from afar, and when they weren't together, the man typically kept to himself. “How did it go with Elder Maxson?”

The vault dweller shrugged as she approached him. “Well… Maxson seems so young compared to everyone else. You’re… okay with that?”

“Don’t let his age fool you,” the Paladin urged. “Maxson’s a brilliant tactician, a formidable warrior, and possesses an idealistic vision for the future of the Brotherhood. I’d follow him anywhere, without question.”

Kori furrowed her brow. “Why are you so confident in his abilities?”

Danse gestured around the mess hall, at all of the soldiers gathered within. “A decade ago, the Brotherhood had almost gone completely astray. The Elder before Maxson sent us down a path that was leading nowhere… he was more concerned about charity than the preservation of technology. But when Maxson took over, he single-handedly re-prioritized the Brotherhood from the ground up and put us back on the path to glory. This ship and its crew are a testament to his leadership.”

The vault dweller placed her hands on her hips, nodding slowly. “He’s a… very dedicated man. It sounds like he… stands behind everything he’s saying.”

“Of course he does.” Danse huffed. “How could he afford not to? I just hope you appreciate how much of a chance I’m taking bringing you into the fold this quickly. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if you screw up… we go down together.”

Kori, at that, visibly cringed, and Danse regretted his wording momentarily. He didn’t have much time to think about it before she was continuing the conversation. “So what’s all this about you being my ‘sponsor’?”

“Elder Maxson is understandably… particular… when it comes to new recruits,” Danse explained. “He believes in order to keep the Brotherhood strong, we have to bond as brothers. As your sponsor, it’s my duty to travel with you throughout the Commonwealth whenever on Brotherhood business to ensure that our ideals are being observed. That’s why I’m so concerned about your performance in the field.”

Understanding crossed Kori’s features, and her previously uncomfortable and unimpressed expression melted into something more relaxed. “I won’t let you down, Danse. I promise.”

The two exchanged confident smiles with each other, and then Danse moved on. “Now, I know you’re eager to hop into a suit of Power Armor and take the fight to the Institute, but first thing’s first. In order to be an effective part of the team, you need to learn your way around this ship and get to know its crew. Since I’ve been officially assigned to you as your sponsor, I’d recommend taking me along with you.”

Kori shrugged. “You can come with me, or wait until I’m done. It’s up to you.”

“In that case, I’d prefer to tag along. If you change your mind…”

“No, no,” Kori said, pondering for a moment. “In fact, this gives us a little time to talk.”

Danse furrowed his brow as Kori began to walk north, towards the shop of the ship. “About?”

“About when we should meet up, now that you’ve got that locking door,” she teased.

Danse, for his part, remained surprisingly stoic. “If I remember correctly, Elder Maxson plans to assign us to a mission later today. If things go to plan, I will be required to remain at the site for clean-up. Tomorrow evening, however, we can…” He thought hard, for a second. “We can… discuss future battle strategies. As… sponsor and soldier.”

The vault dweller shrugged, and smiled up at Danse as they walked. “Alright. Works for me. We’ll keep in touch about it, just in case. I’ll check in with you tomorrow morning to make sure nothing’s been switched around that could interfere.”

“Affirmative,” Danse approved, nodding as the two continued making their way through the Prydwen.

So it was happening, then. They would meet, and Kori would spend the evening with him. Danse could feel himself tensing in his armor. While fraternization wasn’t against the rules, it was generally frowned upon, due to the complications it could cause both on and off of the battlefield. However, he assured himself, Kori was different; she was a vault dweller, and one that didn’t let herself be bound by rules and regulations. More likely than not, she would be spending most of her time off of the ship anyways, without him. Their… potential sexual relations… would not inhibit on his ability to be the best soldier for the Brotherhood that he could be.

This would be fine. Everything would be fine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay so listen. I first wrote this chapter when this was shameless self-indulgent smut, before it really garnered a plot, so it's... a bit over the top in some places. BUT. Maybe you'll enjoy it. I know, after re-reading it, I know I still do.

He hadn’t meant to jump when he heard the knock at his door. But Danse, being on edge as it was, couldn’t help the small gasp of surprise when the metal of his door was hit. Undoubtedly, it was Kori. With a sigh, he set down his gun, which he had been tinkering with, and stood slowly. Breathed in. Breathed out. Straightened himself out. Approached the door.

Sure enough, when he opened it, it was the vault dweller on the other side. The Paladin suddenly realized that her skin reminded him of pre-war pennies, or walnuts; something ancient and forgotten, yet something that had lasted through years of neglect and damage. Something that seemed simple at first glance, but held secret power. And he didn’t know what to say or do about it.

The BOS uniform on her figure didn’t help much, either.

Kori knocked her boots together, and brought a single hand to her chest in a salute. “Paladin Danse,” she said loudly, but not enough to draw unnecessary attention; just enough that if anyone _was_ listening, it would seem as if Kori had an important matter to discuss with her sponsor. Strictly work-related.

Danse had to gather his nerves in order to speak clearly. “Initiate Kori.”

“Permission to… discuss our infiltration of Fort Strong, review our strategy for future combat operations?”

He was taken by surprise: she had confessed to him, at one point, that she had no military experience, and yet she sounded as if she knew exactly what she was talking about. “I… yes. Yes, come in.” Danse stepped aside, and Kori entered swiftly. Danse shut the door just as quickly, but locked it at half the speed. The man didn’t turn away from the door, at first, simply staring down at the handle.

Then, Kori cleared her throat.

“You know… I’m a Knight now, Danse.”

“Yes,” he said, swallowing thickly.

A pause.

“Danse, you can turn around. I’m not naked already.”

He gave a nervous laugh to attempt to brush off some of the awkward aura, and rotated around slowly. He blinked in surprise to find that she wasn’t sitting at his desk, but rather, on his bed, leaned back as if it was hers. Kori quirked an eyebrow at Danse, and frowned.

“If you’re not feeling ready for this, or if you’ve changed your mind--”

“No,” he cut in quickly, approaching slowly. “No, I… I want to… try.” He coughed a little, and scratched his neck. “Am I nervous as all hell? Yes. Absolutely. But you’ve… you’re offering me an opportunity that I don’t think many others would have…”

The vault dweller sat up. “Danse, are you kidding me? You… I’m pretty sure at least _half_ of the people on this ship have thought about bang-- er, sleeping, with you. Some people are… not very discreet about staring at your ass.”

The Paladin sputtered, and Kori giggled. Danse quieted himself so he could hear it. Then, she scooted to one side, and patted the space she had made on the bed next to her. “Come on. There’s no titles or ranks in here. Just you, and me. Danse, and Kori.”

Inhale. Exhale. Danse willed his feet, which suddenly felt like lead, into moving him to the bed. He sat down slowly, as if afraid to move the mattress with his weight. His eyes didn’t leave hers, those pear green eyes of hers, and her smile was so patient, so calm. She placed a gentle hand on his knee, patting for a second or two.

“It’s okay,” she said sweetly. “I promise I don’t bite.” Her smile grew a little. “Unless you want me to.”

Danse said nothing, but he did blush, and blink rapidly. Kori pulled her hand away.

“Now,” she said, even scooting away and giving Danse more room. “It’s time to talk boundaries. In order for me to be able to determine how far is okay to go with you, I first would like to know the extent of your sexual experience. I don’t need details, I just need to know what you’ve done and how far you’ve gone.”

The Paladin blew out from his lips, finally breaking eye contact and staring straight ahead. “W-well… I’ve… never had, um… penetrative intercourse--”

“Wait, you mean… with another man, right?” Kori looked surprised.

“Um, no. I’ve never had penetrative intercourse _ever_ . But I… I have received oral from a woman, but I have not given…” He was fidgeting profusely. “I _am_ capable of bringing a woman to orgasm, however, I… have experience with intimate physical contact--”

“Danse,” Kori cut in, waving her hand. “Danse, you… you’ve never fucked anyone before? Seriously?” Before he had the chance to look offended, she hurriedly added, “Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with that, I’m just… shocked. You’re a catch.”

“I’ve been solicited before,” he elaborated himself, “but it never seemed… pertinent, or safe, for that matter. It was always at random bars. The woman who gave me oral sex was someone I had known for about a year, and we were both inebriated, but I didn’t want to press any further. She didn’t seem interested in having full sexual intercourse, regardless. I-- I'm sorry. It's... been a while...”

Kori furrowed her brow, but nodded in understanding. “Well, this… changes the dynamic a little. Okay. I know what we’re going to do this time. You’re going to fuck me. That wasn’t my original plan, but…” She licked her lips. “I’m certainly not complaining.”

Danse’s mouth was slightly parted, and he looked Kori up and down, before the images of her beneath him, breasts bouncing and soft gasps from her red lips, started flashing across his mind. He flushed, and his breathing picked up negligibly. Kori was beautiful-- he couldn’t deny it, what with her jet-black hair and the curve of her face. The idea of seeing her beneath him writhing in pleasure made a spark light in his gut. “I… that sounds like a… a good way to start this arrangement,” he agreed, nodding maybe a touch hastily.

The vault dweller laughed, and placed her hand on Danse’s knee again. “Before we start, though, there’s still a few things that need discussing. Do you know what a safeword is?”

“I’m afraid I don’t.”

“A safeword,” she explained, “is a word that, when one person or the other says it, means that everything stops _immediately_. There’s no question until after the person who said the safeword is taken care of. Personally, I like the traffic light system: green for go, or good, yellow for slow down, or change things up, and red for stop. The reason a safeword or traffic light system is used is because sometimes, there will be planned-out scenarios where someone may be saying ‘no’ or ‘I don’t want this’, but it’s a part of what was agreed upon prior. A safeword, in that case, becomes the new ‘no’. Does that make sense? It’s a way to have power over the situation, even if the other person is the one holding the ropes. Sometimes figuratively, sometimes… literally.”

Danse nodded slowly as Kori spoke. “Yes. I think I understand. But you’re saying that some people attain sexual pleasure from having their control taken from them?”

“Some do, yes, but sometimes, it’s the person _with_ the control that gets the most pleasure, even if most of the physical attention is being given to the one without the control. There’s words for this dynamic; A sub, and a dom. A dom is, well, the one who’s dominating the scene. The one in control. A sub is… I’ve actually forgotten. I think subordinate? The sub is the person without the control, who obeys the dom’s commands. But being a dom doesn’t necessarily mean they’re on top, and being a sub doesn’t always mean they have to be on bottom.”

“What do you mean by top and bottom?” Danse inquired, spreading his legs a little as the room started to heat up. Or maybe it was just him.

Kori hummed as she thought of a simply way to explain it. “Well, the top is the person who is performing the penetrative act, and the bottom is the one receiving. A sub can be a top, and a dom can be a bottom. Having all the control doesn’t necessarily equate to topping. It’s all about who’s giving the commands. A dom can command their sub to fuck them until they’re raw and tell the sub they’re not allowed to cum until their dom does. Inversely, there’s the more common result, the dom fucking their sub and taking their pleasure as they see fit. It works both ways.”

The Paladin was very red in the face at this point. He could barely believe that such vulgar words could come out of Kori’s mouth so casually. She swore, used “fuck” more liberally than was probably necessary in stressful situations, but to hear it in this context felt like something more… debase. “I understand. So… I assume you’d be taking on the role of ‘dom’, then?”

“Just while we’re starting out,” she replied, and Danse realized that Kori had been moving closer to him this whole time. They were almost shoulder to shoulder now. “After all, someone’s gotta show you the ropes. When you’ve had more experience…”

A single finger came to trail down Danse’s arm.

“... I’d be more than happy to give you all my control.”

Danse shuddered, and Kori smirked. Her hand wrapped around his shoulders, and pulled him close, until their noses were almost brushing.

“I won’t do anything crazy; we’ll always discuss what we want to do each time we meet. What I want, and what from that you enjoy or don’t enjoy, or don’t want to even try. It’s supposed to be good for both of us… for the dom _and_ the sub.”

Danse nodded quickly, dark umber eyes connecting with green.

“So…” Kori shifted, and before Danse could react, Kori was in his lap, straddling him, and he realized he was already half-hard. The dark-skinned woman pressed herself close, close enough that the heat from her core was radiating against Danse’s cock, and she leaned down to whisper in his ear. “Let me tell you how tonight’s going to go. You’re going to kiss me and touch me as much as you want, anywhere you want. You’re going to strip me down, and I’m going to strip you down. You’re going to finger my cunt while I stroke your beautiful cock, and when I’m ready, you’re going to lay me down on your bed, and you’re going to fuck me nice and deep. Do you understand?”

Danse nodded so hard, he thought his head was going to fall off. He couldn’t believe she was going to let him do this. That she _wanted_ him to do this, that she was _commanding_ it of him. Kori, a vault dweller, a _subordinate_ , commanding her superior. He was so dizzy, and he was rock hard now, after all that Kori had said. His hands came to grip at her hips, pulling her closer, until she was pressing against the hard, confined length. “Permission to begin?” he asked breathlessly, desperately.

“Fuck yes,” Kori replied, and that was all the permission he needed to slam his mouth against hers, hungry and desperate. She moaned breathily against him, and he groaned in kind, fingers digging into her hip bones to hold her close, to grind against her. The friction between them caused what was once a spark to blossom into a flame, and Danse’s hands moved from Kori’s hips to her ass, squeezing and kneading harshly. Kori’s lips were so soft, it was unbelievable to him. So soft, so giving. He wanted to meld into her, to become one. God, and she was so hot against him. He already felt as if his head was going to burst from the intense need, the desire, of _more, closer_.

Danse barely flinched when her hands came to hold at the sides of his head, but he did grunt in surprise when he felt her tongue lick the top of his teeth. He parted his lips in surprise, and she took advantage of the moment to slide into his mouth. The intertwining of their tongues… that was something new. Danse had never had a kiss this intense before. Not sober, anyways. But the slick slide of it, the _taste_ … he could feel the hard twitch his dick gave in response, straining in his BOS uniform, and he ground against her again. Danse humped dryly against her, and Kori let him, making small, appreciative sounds on any particularly harsh thrust, or a loud moan or grunt.

A string of saliva kept them connected when Kori pulled away from their kissing, and Danse was blown away by the size of her lust-blown pupils, the swell of her lips, and the blush on her cheeks. He followed her hands with his eyes as she unbuckled the belt around his neck, then slowly began to slide down the zipper of the jumpsuit. When he tried to reach up his hands for hers, she stopped him with a “nuh-uh,” and pushing down his hands gently. “Not yet,” Kori chided lightly, placing his hands on her thighs instead.

Danse jolted when cool fingers brushed over his bare chest, threading in and out of the dark, thick hair there, and over his hardening nipples. He yelped when Kori tugged lightly on one bud. He gasped in surprise at the feeling it gave. He didn’t expect the simple touch to affect him the way it did: his cock jolted again, a spark of pleasure running down his spine, and he felt the first bit of precum beginning to dampen the fabric of his briefs.

“Like that?” Kori asked, chuckling lowly as she repeated the motion on his other nipple.

“A-ah… y-yes…” He arched his chest towards her, offering up more of himself without thinking, and the woman in his lap gave a warm laugh. She took both buds in her fingers, rubbing them and tugging them intermittently. The poor Paladin had to bring up a hand to cover half of his face, embarrassed by how easily Kori had already reduced him to putty with just a few fingers. Not even with her hands, just her fingers!

Somehow, Danse could tell that his nervousness was adding to his arousal; when he was alone, he never felt this achingly hard, he never felt so wonderfully exposed. Everything was in his control, from the speed of his touches, to the intensity, the when and how. Now, he was utterly helpless. He couldn’t bring his arms to move, to direct Kori elsewhere, even if he wanted to. He was trapped under nothing but her gaze and her touch.

The more she pulled and tugged, the harder and more frequently Danse twitched and gasped. One hand was still covering his face, and he would sometimes bite down on the pad of his pinkie finger. The other was tangled in the sheets beneath his hand, grasping desperately to keep himself grounded. He let out a quiet whimper when Kori dipped her head into his neck, leaving soft kisses there, and when she bit down on his collar bone…

“Oooh, f-fuuuckk,” Danse ground out, giving a harsh buck of his hips and writhing. “I-If you don’t stop, I-- I might not…”

Thankfully, the vault dweller got the message, and let go of Danse’s poor sensitive nipples. She laughed against his skin, deft hands slipping under his uniform by his arms, and slipping it down to expose the rest of his torso. “You should see yourself,” Kori whispered, leaning back and placing her palm lightly against Danse’s still-confined shaft.

Sure enough, when he glanced down, he saw that he was beginning to soak through his _uniform_ , not just his underwear. The wet patch there was already a considerable size, almost as large as a bottle cap. Danse groaned, and tilted his head back, having to close his eyes to keep from cumming then and there.

 _She_ was doing this to him. Kori was doing this to him, and she had _barely_ touched his cock.

Danse’s eyes snapped open at the sound of another buckle being undone. Kori had unfastened the collar of her uniform, and was slowly beginning to zip down the front of _her_ uniform. Unwilling to miss out on the opportunity to do so himself, Danse gently swatted her hands away, and did the rest of the job himself.

His throat went dry when he realized she wasn’t wearing a bra. All he could think about then was her own sensitive buds, rubbing against the rough, coarse fabric of the BOS uniform. He pulled apart the layers, fingers trembling as her breasts sprang free. At that point, he looked up to Kori with wide, eager, yet uncertain eyes.

“You can touch them,” the vault dweller assured him, eyes lidded and smiling sweetly down at the Paladin.

Danse nodded, quickly, and set his sights back on Kori’s chest. He took each round mass in each hand, squeezing gently, before flicking his thumbs over her nipples. She crooned appreciatively, and ran her fingers through Danse’s hair. He relaxed instantly into her touch, eyes fluttering shut, and let his head fall forwards, until he was resting against Kori’s sternum. Kori continued to scratch his hair, whispering soft, sweet things to him as he squoze, tugged, and pinched at Kori’s breasts and nipples.

This was nice. This was comfortable. He was almost starting to fall asleep, when he heard her call him, “Good boy… so good, playing with my tits…”

Danse’s grip tightened ever so slightly. Good boy. _Good boy_. The word echoed and bounced around in his mind, and he wanted to please Kori, to be worthy of that title. Then he remembered, all of a sudden, that he was harder than he could remember in recent memory. The need to cum had definitely decreased, but his cock still throbbed, and he still hadn’t even gotten to the main event. His mouth parted, and he latched onto the side of Kori’s breast, sucking and biting lightly. His whole body shuddered in response to the sound that she made, a low approving groan that vibrated in his skull. Encouraged by her response, he moved outwards, towards her nipple, and gently suckled on it, looking up for Kori’s approval as he did so. Her eyes were but thin slits, and her smile from before had devolved into just the lightest quirk of her lips. Danse wanted to see her fall apart further.

He pulled off and away from her chest with a light pop, licking his lips and working Kori’s BOS uniform further down, until she was just as bare as he was. Once he reached her hips, she stood up from his lap (to his dismay), and helped him work it down the rest of the way, until it pooled at her feet. She _was_ wearing underwear, but a few thick curls of hair poked out from the thin fabric, and Danse felt a nervous tremble run through him at the thought that he would soon see Kori in her entirety.

“More?” she asked, teasing Danse by pulling down the front of her panties just enough to hint at the hidden treasure that lay beneath.

“Please,” he replied breathlessly, scooting forwards a little on the bed.

Kori smirked as she approached him, fingers curling into his BOS uniform, and he lifted his hips to aid her as she pulled it off of him entirely. That left him in just his precum-soaked underwear, but she didn’t move to take those off of him just yet. Instead, Kori moved onto the bed, pulling Danse with her, until she was laying beneath him and he was between her legs. She moved her hand down her body, to her stomach, to her covered cunt, and rubbed enticing circles over the little nub hidden there.

“Won’t you help me..?” she asked, pouting a little as she stared expectantly up at the Paladin. “I need these off…”

With a nod, Danse reached his hands for her panties, but was confused when he was stopped with a click of her tongue. “No no… draw it out. Start at my ankles. Work your way up to it. Show me you can earn it.”

Danse frowned, but did as he was commanded, despite how hard his cock ached at this point. He let his fingers trace over her sensitive skin, still soft from 200 years in frozen isolation, tickling up the insides of her calves and spreading out into palms once he got to her knees. As he continued upwards, he spread her legs further apart, until he finally reached her underwear. Granted, it had only taken about ten seconds, but it seemed to last ten minutes, in Danse’s mind. Kori didn’t stop him when he pulled off the last remaining garment rather hastily, even giggling a little when it snapped off of her toe and flew somewhere onto the floor behind them.

When Danse finally did look down between Kori’s legs, he could feel his dick twitch again. As he was reaching down to touch or adjust himself, he wasn’t sure which, the woman beneath him piped up:

“Aren’t you going to touch me?” Kori spread her legs a little wider. “I want to feel those fingers in my cunt, Danse.”

He stopped mid-way to his crotch, and instead moved his hands so that one was holding one of her thighs open, while the other came to rest between her legs, just above where she wanted to be touched. Danse laughed a little when Kori squirmed, and she giggled in turn. Something about the exchange did something to his heart he didn’t want to think about. While she was still giggling, Danse moved his hand down, until two fingers were tentatively swirling around in the slick she was secreting. Once he’d gathered a fair amount, he moved back up, and rubbed into the little nub at the apex of her thighs. Kori jolted and moaned, maneuvering her hips this way and that in order to get the most pleasure she could from Danse’s movements. After a while of this, Danse frowned, and pushed Kori’s hips down with a single hand on her abdomen. She opened her eyes and stared at him curiously, and he had to take a moment to find the courage to speak.

“Let me do this for you,” he asked of her, quietly, before his fingers began to move again. Kori nodded, and let her head fall back, moaning softly and remaining still as Danse touched her. Soon enough, Danse had Kori gasping and twitching with each touch to her pulsing core, and only then did his fingers quest lower, until he was pressing into her dripping hole. The slide was easy, and it wasn’t long at all before he was able to slip in three, stretching her open for his cock.

When Danse removed his fingers, Kori sat up and took them from him immediately, sucking off her own essence and moaning at the taste. Then, she sat up further, and yanked Danse in for a quick, searing kiss. Danse had to pull away from it to softly cry out when his cock suddenly sprang free from his underwear, and deft fingers wrapped around it. She stroked him as she spoke, voice ragged from lust and pleasure.

“Before you ask… or maybe you weren’t going to…” She sounded unimpressed at the latter idea. “... before you ask, no, we don’t need protection. I’m at no risk of pregnancy right now.”

The Paladin froze up, ears and cheeks burning at the realization that he hadn’t even thought to ask about that. However, his reaction soothed Kori from her wary gaze, and she kissed his cheek sweetly.

“A lot of people space out in the heat of the moment. Just so long as you weren’t intentionally forgetting, I’m not mad. Any reasonable woman will _always_ check.”

Danse laughed nervously, but was cut short as Kori yanked him down with her as she laid down again. The change in angle placed Danse’s cock right on top of her pussy, quivering with need and ready to be filled. He glanced down between them, and all of his words were gone in an instant. _This was happening. He was going to do this. He was going to lose his virginity to a vault dweller. A subordinate. A woman who was a master of seduction and far, far more experienced than he was._

All of a sudden, Danse felt very shy and inadequate. That didn’t deter Kori in the slightest, however. She chuckled, and wiggled a little so Danse’s dick moved to fall directly at her entrance. The wet heat immediately caught Danse’s attention, pulling him from his thoughts, and all he could really think, then, was that he needed to be _in_ her, _now_ . He looked up at her, panting and eyes questioning. _Permission to proceed?_

Kori responded with a hand grasping at the back of his head, and a smirk, before yanking him down and whispering, “Fuck me, _now_ . _Hard_. Make every soldier on this ship jealous that they can’t have this.”

Even if he had wanted to, Danse couldn’t have _possibly_ contained himself then. With a low snarl, he bucked his hips forwards, and the head of his cock slid inside of the vault dweller. The two of them gasped simultaneously, but Kori, especially. She arched her back, and whined lowly. “Come on,” she commanded, “more… deeper, don’t… don’t stop there, don’t you _dare_ \--”

She found herself cut off with a sharp cry as Danse thrust in a little more, movements jerky and uncoordinated. His teeth were grit together, his eyes dark and focused much like the first time Kori had seen him masturbating. It make her shiver, and her legs crossed behind Danse’s back to urge him to push in deeper. It took some coaxing, but eventually, Danse was finally seated to the hilt. He swallowed thickly, staring down at the space between their bodies-- or, lack thereof-- and then up at Kori.

“You know what to do from here, Danse,” she chuckled, pulling his head down with a hand in his hair for a slow, tender kiss. Again, his heart skipped a beat, and he had to pull away to gasp for breath and to collect himself, before pulling out halfway and thrusting back in.

“Fuck,” Danse whispered, in awe of the feeling and the sight of being inside of Kori. He was too into it to monitor his language. Kori didn’t seem to mind a single bit. She guided the speed of his thrusts with the heels of her feet, biting her lip and reaching down two fingers to spin around her clit.

“Yeah, that’s it,” she encouraged the Paladin, scratching the back of his scalp as he panted and ground into her. “Fuck, Danse, you’re _thick_.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Danse choked out again, thrusting harder into Kori and rocking her with the motion. His jaw was tense but open, pants issuing forth from between his chapped lips as he claimed Kori. The tight heat was entirely far too overwhelming, and it didn’t help at all that Kori was just so damn _gorgeous_. Still, he gave Kori his best effort, pistoning in and out of her quickly. Kori gazed up at Danse with heavily lidded eyes, filled with lust.

“God, yeah,” Kori praised him, bucking back a little against him to encourage him to go harder, rougher. “Come on… fuck me harder… please, Danse, I want to be sore tomorrow… come _on!_ ”

With a guttural growl, Danse finally moved to pound Kori into the mattress, hard enough that their skin began to smack loudly together in the small room. Kori threw her head back and cried out, causing Danse to snarl and push himself harder, faster. “Fuck,” he groaned, for a third time. But, this time, he managed to elaborate on his thoughts. “Fuck, you’re so fucking… _tight._ ”

“Yeah,” Kori gasped, taking her hand off of Danse’s head and pinching one of her nipples, still circling the bud between her legs. She tilted her head back and bit her lip, groaning loudly and arching her back. That sight was the final push Danse needed. He hooked a hand under one of her legs, and brought it over his shoulder, before batting her hand at her cunt out of the way and taking over himself. It shocked him just how wet she was, how easily his fingers glided over her slick skin. He looked up at Kori to get her approval, but was shocked to find that she was completely out of it, eyes shut and gasping with one head lolled to the side.

On a particularly rough thrust, she whined, and that spelled the beginning of the end for both of them. As she clenched down around him, Danse’s thrusting stuttered, and he pressed Kori down into the mattress as he began to near his climax. Kori seemed to be reaching the same point, her cries beginning to escalate. Danse’s fingers on her clit sped up, and he leaned down to growl into her ear.

“I want to see you like this more,” he gasped out, and she shuddered and whimpered. “Seeing you like this, spread out beneath me, begging for my touch… you like this, don’t you? Prove it to me. Cum for me. _Cum_.”

A few seconds passed, before Kori cried out and came around Danse, pulsing hard around him. The feeling, the sight, the sound… all of it proved too much to for Danse. With a sharp shout, Danse thrust himself in to the hilt and spilled into Kori. His hips jittered with each aftershock, but Kori crooned and spoke softly to him through it all. When he finally fell still, shoulders heaving as he held himself over her, she lowered her leg from his shoulder and smoothed her hands over his back.

“Good boy,” she whispered, and he shuddered, heavily lidded eyes staring up into hers darkly. Good boy. Yes. Yes, he was. He had been good. Kori would take care of him. Kori was proud of him.

This was a good idea.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here, kiddies, you see that we begin to delve into the kink... but only scratching the surface.

Over the course of the next three days, Kori and Danse spoke as if nothing had happened.  Somehow, he found he didn’t mind. He had thought that it would bother him, but in all honesty, it came as a relief. It wasn’t that he hadn’t enjoyed himself. It wasn’t that at all. He was eagerly awaiting the next time he and Kori could get together. No, it was more that he was enjoying the time to think about the change in the dynamic of their relationship as a result of the night they had shared.

… It hadn’t really changed much at all, really.

But that was a part of why he needed to think about it. He had been anticipating things to become strained outside of the bedroom, tense, like they couldn’t talk. Really, it was a possibility he should have considered _before_ sleeping with her, but he had been too excited and nervous to consider the possibility that it could taint what they had before. But after Kori had left that night, and then the next morning, when she spotted him at breakfast, she headed over with the same confident smirk, and sat down directly across from him, and talked about her plans for the day without any pause or innuendo.

At first, Danse had been shocked, and it had proven difficult for him to get back in the swing of things. But, by the time the next day rolled around, their conversations resumed the same tone as before they had fucked.

The fourth night after that first one, Kori had him again. The experience was no less exhilarating than the last, and the aftermath no less strange. And of course, there were more nights after that. By the fourth time they slept together, Danse was finally starting to get the hang of it a little. His conversations soon shared Kori’s casualness. They spoke of weapon maintenance and battle strategy, and Kori told him a bit about her husband.

“Gabriel always wanted me to be more proficient with guns,” she had admitted to him as they tinkered with their laser rifles one day. “I wasn’t interested, at first. I had him to protect me.” She smiled at the memory of her husband, and Danse enjoyed the peaceful look that spread across her features. She always seemed the most at ease when she was recollecting her pre-war life. “Any time he would go to the range, he’d ask me if I wanted to go. Even when I was pregnant with Shaun! Then, of course, tensions started rising in the world; shortages in… well, everything… had our world leaders on their toes, desperately defending what they had left. So by the time I finally let Gabriel teach me a thing or two, it wasn’t a month later before we were being herded underground into that damn vault.”

Kori’s voice had taken on a bitter tone at the end of her statement, and she slapped a hand down on her gun in frustration. And then there were the times she would remember the bombs, or the vault, and that happy look would crash and burn, and turn into something violent.

“Hey,” Danse barked, but softly and in that smooth tone of his. “Easy. Too much external stress can cause a weapon to misfire. You’re allowed to be frustrated, but direct your frustration to the table instead.”

Kori sighed, pushing her laser rifle away from herself a little, before chuckling. She turned to look at Danse, and the look she was giving him… his stomach dropped in a delicious way.

“Or I could work out my frustration on you, Paladin.”

Danse could feel his ears and cheeks heat up, but luckily, Kori brushed away the tense aura she had made with a happy laugh, pulling her weapon back to herself and refocusing on fine-tuning the instrument.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. Well… not in plain sight on the Prydwen, in any case. It’s just… it’s funny, seeing you get flustered.”

“Uh… noted, Knight,” he replied simply, shaking his head and returning to his own weapon. “Though it would probably be better to leave those sorts of… implications… for when we are alone.”

Kori looked up, and around, and shrugged. “I dunno, it looks pretty dead around here to me. It’s just Ingram over there.” She jutted her thumb behind her, towards the ship’s head mechanic, who had her nose in a suit of Power Armor. “She’s not paying attention. With that being said…”

She pushed her gun away yet again, and leaned forwards, closer to Danse across from her.

“When should we meet up again?”

Danse’s stomach dropped again, the feeling still more thrilling than threatening. “I… I would still rather discuss this elsewhere, where we have no chance of being interrupted, if that’s alright with you. Regardless of our likelihood of remaining uninterrupted currently, I would still appreciate a more private area to talk again about… furthering our arrangement.”

To the Paladin’s relief, Kori leaned back, nodding in understanding. “Alright,” she said softly, putting his twisting stomach to ease. “Most nights, when the day is uneventful, I head to the forecastle to work on my sniping. If you want to meet me there tomorrow night at around… oh, maybe seven? We can plan our next meeting there. If you can’t make it right away, don’t worry, sometime’s I’m there long into the night. It’s safe to say I won’t leave anytime before nine.”

“Alright.” Danse nodded in agreement. “Seven. Understood, Knight. Er… Knight Farnsworth.”

The vault dweller smiled, and stood from the table. “I’m getting some lunch, and then I’m heading out to Diamond City. I have to speak with a friend there-- the detective. He radioed me, said he’d been doing some thinking, and we know where to go next to find out how to get to my son.”

At that, Danse perked up. “Oh really? Do you require any assistance?”

Kori cringed visibly before she could stop it. “I… I don’t think you’d be interested in tagging along, really. I don’t think you and Nick would get along.”

The Paladin frowned, and settled back down. “And what makes you think that, Soldier?”

“He…” She frowned, and thought quickly. “He will always prefer a more peaceful approach over anything violent. Even when it comes to Feral Ghouls or Super Mutants. Very much a peacemaker, when possible.”

“That… doesn’t necessarily sound like a terrible trait,” Danse admitted. “Though when it comes to Ghouls or Synths, then yeah, I suppose we would end up bashing heads there. Alright. I’ll stay here. Tomorrow night, then.”

“Tomorrow night,” Kori nodded. She smiled, taking her laser rifle, and after slinging her pack over her shoulder, she headed away down the halls of the Prydwen.

 

* * *

 

They met as planned-- sure enough, Danse found Kori on the forecastle of the Prydwen just as she promised she would be, a sniper rifle in hand, and balloon targets floating up from the ground below. He couldn’t help but find himself surprised, even though they’d agreed to meet here and now; Danse couldn’t recall hearing of her re-arrival, or seeing her walking about the ship. She was quiet, that he knew, but this was odd.

Kori was odd.

The Paladin closed the door to the forecastle behind him, watching Kori as she stood poised at the end of the walkway, shoulders tensed as she carefully watched every balloon rise, only firing when it was the closest and slowest it could be in comparison to her position. Any that passed above her, she let go. He observed her, for a minute or two, before shaking his head and tutting at her like she was a small child.

“Mmm mmh, no, no. Your positioning is all wrong.”

Kori turned around to glare at him, eyes glazed over with concentration that was being disrupted. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Whoa. Okay. Tense _and_ angry. Not good combinations for the vault dweller. Danse knew this well, and held up his hands non-offensively as he approached. “You’re hitting your shots now, sure, but you’re going to wear yourself out fast if you keep holding the rifle that way. The problem is, you’re standing straight forwards. That’s not right, not by a long shot. May I touch you?”

Kori narrowed her eyes, but nodded nevertheless. Danse placed his hands gently on her hips, and turned her to the side.

“Keep aiming forwards. That’s it. Good. Better, right? You have more strength to support your weapon this way, and you make yourself less of a target. Now, your left hand…” He reached up, gently pulling her hand back, until it was on the hand guard rather than the barrel. “... needs to be back here. You can support your weapon better. Are you worried about accuracy? Were you trying to hold the barrel to keep it steady?”

Reluctantly, Kori nodded.

“Trust me. This will be much better. You won’t be hyper-extending your elbow, and your stamina will last much longer. Not only that, but you won’t be angling your head as awkwardly to peer through your scope. Give it a try.”

Danse stepped back and away from the vault dweller to give her another shot, and he beamed proudly as he watched her speed and accuracy skyrocket.

“That’s it,” he praised her, clapping once she had finished and turned back to face him. Kori, too, had a proud grin spread across her features. “That’s it. Outstanding, Soldier.”

“Come on, now,” Kori balked playfully, leaning back against the railing of the forecastle. “First I’m a civilian, then a soldier, then Initiate, Knight, back to civilian, soldier… you gotta make up your mind on what to call me at some point, Danse.”

“I will address you with a title befitting of your current behavior,” he explained, chuckling as he approached her. “As your superior officer, I have that right.” He leaned on the railing next to her, gazing out over the horizon of the darkening sea to the east.

They stood together in comfortable silence, for a time. Danse wondered, briefly, what was going through Kori’s head at the moment. It was a common thought to occur to him; she was a woman out of her time, who had lost so much, and had the weight of so much on her shoulders-- from what she had told him about the Minutemen making her General, of losing her family, her home… surely, that all weighed down on her more than she would admit to him. Silent moments like this almost worried him, in a way. He felt like it was a part of his duty, as her sponsor, to keep her engaged, in the moment. To prevent her from drowning in her own thoughts.

And yet, when he turned to look at her now… she looked thoughtful, yes, but mostly at peace. It threw Danse off guard. After everything that had happened, and some of the things she had yet to face… how could she be so calm? So collected, so sure of herself, when her husband would have been far better for this world?

His own musings were cut short when those pear green eyes turned to his umber ones. Kori grinned lightly, and leaned in closer to Danse.

“It’s not a bad view,” she said to him, before turning back to face it. “Better than what’s off to the west.”

The Commonwealth. Danse pursed his lips, and merely hummed a response. Kori spoke up again.

“You wanna meet up again tonight? I’d really like to be close to you again.”

“I think I have time, yes,” Danse replied, stretching a little as he tried, vainly, to hide the excited tension in his shoulders. “What did you have planned?”

“Well… I don’t think you’re ready to bottom just yet,” Kori admitted, tapping her fingers against her arms. “But I do still want to take things up a notch. Get into that dom-sub action for real. Have you ever eaten out a woman before?”

The Paladin’s ears turned pink, and he coughed a little. “Uh… no. I haven’t… given oral to anyone before.”

“Well, it’s never too late to start.” She patted his arm, and then stopped abruptly. “Unless, of course, that doesn’t sound fun to you. I can understand how some people would be hesitant to put their mouths down there.”

“Well… if a woman has the confidence and the desire to do it for me, I see no problem in doing the same, so long as my partner is clean.”

“Then I’ll shower before I come to your room,” Kori promised, offering a comforting smile. “And tonight’s the night where the traffic light system will come into play. Here’s how it’s going to work. I’m going to dom you, which means that no matter what I tell you to do, you do it without hesitation or question. However, intermittently, I’ll ask you to give me a color. If you’re doing good, you say green. If you need things to slow down, or go more back towards vanilla, you say yellow. If you’re extremely uncomfortable, or scared, you say red, and everything stops. We’ll talk about what went wrong, and how we can avoid the same problem in the future. Does that sound okay?”

The Paladin nodded, before figuring a verbal confirmation would sound more confident. “Yes. I understand. What time should I expect you?”

“Well, if I want to make sure I’m really clean…” The vault dweller did the math in her head. “An hour, maximum. If it ends up being any later than that, just assume something came up and I couldn’t make it.”

“Understood.”

Kori nodded to herself, before standing up, and stretching, the fabric of the BOS suit creaking as she did so. “Welp, better go get started on that shower, then. This may end up being the cleanest I have ever been since before I went into cryo. I’ll catch you in an hour, Paladin.”

“Affirmative,” Danse confirmed again. He pounded his hand to his chest in salute out of habit. Kori just smiled and laughed, and patted his hand before walking down the forecastle back into the Prydwen.

Danse didn’t follow immediately; the evening breeze was rather nice, calming. It helped him to keep his mind clear, because he knew that the moment he walked back into the Prydwen, he would be swimming in the realm of possibility. Kori wanted to be eaten out, but what else? Maybe he should have asked for more details. But, then again, that may have come across as rude, and besides, some of the uncertainty keeping Danse on his toes was a thrill in itself.

His thoughts wandered to the last time they had met-- Kori’s cool and confident fingers reducing him to a puddle of pleasure in a matter of minutes, how she had known his nipples would be sensitive, the way she pulled him around like she was stronger than he…

Danse closed his eyes, and tilted back his head, ignoring the slight swell of his cock in his Brotherhood uniform. God… he couldn’t _wait_.

 

* * *

 

This time, when Kori knocked, Danse was prepared. He set down the book he had been reading (something Kori had salvaged and pressed into his hands, insisting he would find it interesting) and walked confidently towards his door.

Kori had cleaned up nicely. There wasn’t a single speck of grime or dirt on her face, and instead of the BOS uniform, she was instead in a clean flannel shirt and jeans. She saluted him, and he saluted her back, before she simply walked inside. There was no one around, currently; no need to falsify a reason to walk inside.

Danse closed and locked the door, and turned back around to face Kori. He was surprised when she wasn’t on the bed, but rather, right in front of him, and she backed him up against the door he had just closed. His throat bobbed as he swallowed nervously, staring down into her eyes inquisitively.

Carefully, Kori took a hold of Danse by his wrists, her eyes gleaming when he didn’t resist when she pinned them against the wall next to his head. “Fast learner,” she chuckled, before diving in to kiss him on the lips. It was slow and soft at first, unlike their first time, and the Paladin could feel his breath leave him in shaking huffs. He could have broken out of her grip, easily-- she was barely even really holding him down, just holding his wrists by his head. There was no force behind it at all. And yet, something about the grip of her hands told him to stay. To remain still. He hadn’t really wanted to pull away, regardless.

After a minute or so, Kori pulled away, licking her lips, and Danse mimicked the motion. She smiled, but didn’t release him, instead slotting her thigh in between his legs. The Paladin huffed, his hips jutting forwards against the friction on his quickly swelling cock.

“God, that’d be nice,” the vault dweller mumbled after a minute or two of kissing Danse everywhere she could reach.

“W-what would be?” he asked her, hips still jittering a little.

“To have you cum just by grinding on my thigh,” she said to him, and he exhaled loudly, just short of moaning. “It’s… a kink of mine. To see my partner become so undone, so needy, that they just… get off without removing a single article of clothing. Cum in their pants. Fuck…”

Danse had shut his eyes, his cheeks burning in humiliation at the thought of cumming in his clothes like a teenage boy. But the way Kori spoke of it, the thick desire in her voice, made his heart pound and his groin ache. He ground a little more firmly against her, before she pulled away, leaving him aching for her touch.

“Maybe I’ll have you do that, anyways.” Kori laughed, and Danse swallowed back a groan. He opened his eyes just in time to see her walking to the middle of his room, facing away from him and unbuttoning her shirt. “Stay right there, gorgeous,” she commanded, and his head thunked against the metal of the door, swallowing thickly. The vault dweller swayed her hips back and forth as she undid button after button. When she was finally done, she didn’t remove the article of clothing, instead turning back around to face Danse. Again, she wore no bra; the expanse of her dark skin was just a line down her torso, obscured by the shirt laying limp around her.

“Come here,” she commanded, with a crook of her finger.

Slowly, Danse obeyed, his posture tall but his gait uncertain. He came to stand before Kori, staring down at her, but was caught off guard when she grabbed him by his chin and yanked him down to be eye level with her. She soothed the shock of the motion by brushing a stray strand of his hair off of his forehead.

“Good boy,” she whispered against his lips, and there it was again; that burning pleasure in his gut, of not just arousal, but a desire, a _need_ to obey. To satisfy Kori, to live up to that title she bestowed upon him. _Good boy._ He desperately swallowed down the whimper that threatened to climb out of his throat.

“Now…” Kori gently guided him down by that hand on his chin, lower, lower, until she clarified what she wanted; “On your knees.”

He fell with a soft thud of his knees on the metal floor, and cringed as it reverberated through his bones, but the pads of his BOS uniform softened the blow. Kori’s hand still remained on his chin, lightly scratching as a reward for his obedience.

“Very good,” she praised him again, and his cock twitched and ached. “Color?”

The Paladin furrowed his brow for a moment, confused, before he remembered. “G-Green. I’m green.”

“Good boy. Keep your hands on your knees, until I tell you you can move them.”

Danse obeyed, sitting back on the heels of his feet and grasping his knees to keep himself in check. He watched, enraptured, as Kori began to undo the button and zipper of her pants, right in front of his eyes. He licked his lips; God, he wanted to please her. He wanted to keep hearing those sweet words from her lips. He wanted…

A soft moan escaped him, unbidden, when she pulled down her pants just enough to reveal a clean-shaven pussy. She wasn’t wearing underwear. He could smell the soap and sweat from where he sat, and _fuck_ , if it wasn’t a challenge not to touch himself before, it was a Herculean effort now. Kori chuckled at him, running a hand through his hair and across his scalp, soothing him. She didn’t tease him for much longer after that, completely removing her pants, and the only article of clothing that remained was the shirt covering her breasts.

“Do you want to touch?” Kori teased, bucking her hips towards him and spreading her lips with two fingers, showing off the pink center hiding within.

“Yes,” Danse groaned, nodding and leaning forwards. His hands left his knees, and he yelped in surprise when a foot came down and pushed one arm back down onto his leg. It hadn’t hurt, but the motion had been quick and without warning.

“ _No_ ,” Kori chided him, and he looked up at her with wide, somewhat frightened eyes. “I _asked_ if you wanted to touch. I did not give you _permission_ to touch. There is a difference, Paladin. And I did not say your hands could leave your knees.”

For a moment, Danse didn’t know what to say. But God… his cock was so _fucking hard_ . He could feel himself soaking his underwear once again, just from how badly he wanted and _needed_ to please Kori. Shame washed through him as he came to the realization that, yes, he had disobeyed. At that point, all that escaped him was an apologetic whine.

Then, suddenly, the pressure of her foot was off of his arm, and she took a gentle hold of his chin again. “Give me a color, Danse.”

“Green,” he gasped out hastily, leaning into her touch like a man starved. Green, green, of course he was green. He still needed to make her feel good, to listen like a good boy. He needed to prove that he was a good boy. “Green, I promise. I’m sorry. I’ll listen better.”

When he glanced up at Kori, she looked… oddly touched. The emotion quickly vanished from her features, and she crooned softly as she scratched his chin again. The comforting motion ended all too soon, and Danse resumed his disciplined pose from before.

“Since this is your first time subbing, I’ll go easy on you,” Kori explained. “Normally, I’d punish you for moving your hands by not letting you use them at all for the remainder of the session, unless I told you otherwise. But I don’t plan on punishing you too harshly during our first few sessions.”

Danse nodded eagerly, wanting to get back into it. The vault dweller seemed to sense this, and didn’t waste time propping a leg up on Danse’s shoulder. The bottom of her shirt brushed against either side of his head, tickling him slightly, but he barely noticed it. Her cunt was _right there_ , right in front of his face, and he could see her slick beginning to drip down one thigh. He whined, but did not move, having to close his eyes against the onslaught of senses. The heat, the scent…

“I’ll ask again, Danse; do you want to touch me? Do you want to eat out my hot cunt?”

“Yes,” he begged, voice hoarse with need. He felt like he was going to break his own kneecaps with how hard he was clutching them. “Please.”

Kori chuckled, and tangled a hand in his hair, pulling him closer, until his nose was brushing against her mound. “Alright. Go ahead, Danse. You can move your hands now, but you may not touch yourself. Do you understand?”

He groaned in frustration, but gave a short, quick little nod regardless.

“I want verbal confirmation, Danse. Say, ‘Yes, I understand’.”

“Yes,” he croaked desperately. “Yes, I understand.”

“Color.”

“Damn it, Kori, _green_ ,” he begged, shifting impatiently. Her smirk grew into a crooked grin, something lecherous that made the Paladin’s stomach coil tight and hot.

“Then get to it.” Kori’s grip on his hair loosened, and immediately, Danse’s hands shot up to clutch onto Kori’s thighs desperately. His lips and tongue, however, didn’t move as quickly; he had a vague idea of what to do-- lots of tongue, no teeth-- but beyond that, he was clueless. He figured it would be smartest to just touch with his tongue where he knew was good with his hands. Tentatively, his tongue snaked out, and he swiped inside of her folds.

The taste took him by surprise; where he had been expecting salt, she was surprisingly sweet. Yes, still salty, but it was more pleasant than he had anticipated. He huffed hotly, and swiped again, gathering her on his tongue and savoring it. When he swallowed, it was sickly thick, but it only made him crave more. Instead, though, he moved to flick at her clit instead, rapid back and for strokes that made her legs tremble around him.

“Yeah… there you go,” she praised softly, stroking his hair soothingly. “That’s it…”

Danse hummed proudly, looking up at her through his thick eyelashes with lust-blown pupils. His cock was straining hard against the fabric of his uniform now, and when he shifted to provide a little relief to his knees, even _that_ was enough to give him some much-needed friction. He groaned, closing his eyes and moving his tongue back, back, until he was thrusting it up into her dripping hole.

Fuck, he felt drunk. Everything was so hot and humid, he was so sure he was suffocating, and yet he felt no need to breathe whenever he pulled back to swipe over her clit again and again. Kori kept running her hands through his hair, whispering soft words of encouragement that made him continue to thrust against nothing but the pressure of his suit.

“Fuck, that’s good,” she whispered, biting her lip and thrusting lightly against his face. Danse made a choked sound, not from a lack of air, but from how _hot_ the small motion was. He was sure he was bruising her thighs from how hard he was holding them at this point, but she wasn’t moving him, and he couldn’t have let go even if he tried. “Fuck, you’re so good… fuck… fuck, just… k-keep your tongue out and stay still.”

Danse hummed his response, falling still and letting his tongue hang out of his mouth hot and heavy. Once he was still, Kori took a rough hold of his head, and began rutting against his open mouth.

While she did that, Danse continued to hold on to her, but his hips continued to rock, back and forth. The friction was so little, just barely there, and yet he couldn’t bring himself to stop. He already felt hot and tight, like he would cum with just the barest touch to his throbbing length. He felt stuck between cumming and losing his erection, and he could barely think with how hot he felt because of it.

Soon, Kori was huffing and panting loudly, and her slick was completely coating his tongue every time it brushed past her entrance. Her grip in his hair tightened, pulling and tugging his head accordingly with the motion of her hips. Danse’s tongue ached, his throat felt so dry, but he needed to please Kori. He needed to be good for her.

“Ah, _fuck_ ,” she bit out, suddenly, and her movements grew more erratic and jerky. “F-Fuck, I’m gonna cum… D-Danse, can I cum in your mouth? Tap my thigh once for yes, tap three times for no.”

She was _fucking delicious_. How could he ever say no? He tapped once, and gripped her thighs tighter, groaning as heat flooded down his groin.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Kori cursed again, breathing loudly. She thrust harshly five, six times, and then she was cumming, legs trembling in an effort to hold her up. Her slick dribbled freely from her entrance, and Danse eagerly lapped up every last drop, groaning and whimpering. His hips continued to thrust, more noticeably now-- he was so fucking _close_ …

Kori pushed Danse’s head away when oversensitivity got the better of her, and she took a moment to catch her breath, running her fingers through Danse’s hair. He barely recognized the motion; he was still humping the air, eyes shut and panting. So. Fucking. _Close_ …

“Good,” Kori praised him, and the pleasure singing in his cock jumped an octave higher. _Fuck!_ “So good… do you want to cum for me?”

Danse couldn’t speak; he was still clinging to Kori’s thighs. All he could give her was a begging sound, a long, high, “Aahh..!”

“Come on,” she urged, voice smooth and encouraging, “you did so good for me. Such a good boy. Cum for me, Danse.”

 _Good boy_ . He was good. He was… _oh fuck._

With an earth-shattering, breathless cry, Danse’s hips stilled, and he curled in on himself as he came, cock pumping out a load of cum right into his underwear and uniform. A hand fell from Kori’s hip to his pulsing cock, gripping it desperately. Whether it was to try to stop himself or to draw it out, he wasn’t sure, but he humped into his own touch like it was the last orgasm he would ever have.

He fell forwards when he finally came down from his high, catching himself with one hand and twitching. A hand came to pet down his back, soft circles rubbed into his skin through the uniform he still wore.

“Color?” Kori murmured above him, sounding just as thoroughly wrecked as him.

Danse had to struggle to catch his breath, and find his voice.

“Green… nothing but green.”

He looked up to where she was crouched in front of him, and the vault dweller smiled. “Here,” she offered, “take my hand. Your knees are going to be sore.”

The Paladin obeyed, taking her extended arm and allowing her to help him to his feet. He was stiff, and his neck was beginning to ache, but the warm hum throughout his body was completely worth it. Kori lead him to his bed, and urged him to lay down, before heading to his desk and bringing over his bottle of water. She pressed it into his hands, and he drank slow sips as she spoke to him.

“Anything you need, Danse? I didn’t mean to get as rough with you as I did. Maybe a neck massage?”

Danse furrowed his brow in thought as he wiped his mouth of water and cum, before nodding. “That might be good, yeah,” he agreed, and she got to work immediately, taking a seat behind him. He hissed and groaned as she kneaded into his muscles, and now that his mind wasn’t addled by sex, he could feel and pay attention to just how _close_ she was to him, her body heat, her scent.

“Um… is this how it always is?”

“What do you mean?”

Danse frowned. “Well, uh, this is more… I assume this is aftercare, but it’s more… intimate than I would have initially imagined.”

The vault dweller’s hands stilled for a moment, before she got back to work.

“I guess it depends from dom to dom,” she explained simply. “Some doms go overboard, cook their sub’s favorite meals and wrap them up in three blankets and prepare a bubble bath… some just check for damage and then head on their way. But the latter of the two is just a shitty dom, to be honest. It really just depends on what the sub wants, believe it or not. I don’t quite know what you expect out of aftercare yet, so I figure it’s better to lay it on thick and then ease off if you feel like I’m being overbearing. If you would rather I back off, don’t be afraid to say so.”

“I… no, this is… nice. This is nice,” Danse assured her, shoulders relaxing as she continued to work his stiff and sore muscles over. “I enjoy this. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Kori replied, beaming. “Just take it easy; I’ll take care of you.”

The Paladin closed his eyes, tilting his head back with a sigh. Yes. She could take care of him. She could make the empty feeling go away.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So as I said at the beginning of this fic, this was _supposed_ to be porn without plot, and then... well... this chapter happened... and my imagination ran away with me...

Kori was an oddball. She didn’t behave like the other new Brotherhood members. While others were eager to learn the ropes and to leave their mark on the world, to participate in something bigger than themselves, the vault dweller was gone often. Many times, Danse would find himself wondering if she had gone off somewhere and died. That idea make his stomach twist up horribly, despite the short time he had known her; he did his best not to think about that. Because when she was here, on the Prydwen, or on missions with Danse, she was the life of everything. She was quiet, but she had a lively sense of humor that even snuck a chuckle out of Elder Maxson on occasion. Her laughter filled a table, even if she wasn’t the loudest of them, but she always, no matter what, left the aura lighter and happier than when she had found it, even if Danse had thought things couldn’t have been any more lighthearted.

When she was around, Danse allowed his walls to fall. Kori meant safety. Kori meant confidence and strength in the face of overwhelmingly impossible odds. It would be a terrible loss to lose her, even if she wasn’t actively participating in Brotherhood missions. Even with how little she was around, she had already become family to the Brotherhood.

Or, rather, she had made the Brotherhood _her_ family.

That was how Danse saw it, at least. Because something about Kori, he knew, could not be tamed. She was a free spirit. A wanderer. She would not be integrated into something unless she intended to make it a part of herself willingly. No, he thought; the Brotherhood was _hers_ , in her own way.

Danse furrowed his brow, refocusing on the Power Armor before him. On his last mission with Kori, it had been badly damaged when he had stumbled backwards over a trap trying to escape a horde of Feral Ghouls. A grenade had triggered, and tossed him forwards, until he landed on his face. Kori had hovered over him worriedly until he had managed to clean the worst of the scrapes from his face. The chestpiece was badly dented, arms and legs scratched. He was still trying to buff out the worst of the white lines, getting his suit back up to his personal standards.

Another thing that confused Danse was that Kori refused to use Power Armor. She had been given her own set, and yet it sat unused in its station. He could have sworn the last time he’d passed it, it had a thin layer of dust on its shoulders. It would be rude, of course, to ask or press on the matter, but his curiosity lingered. Power Armor would protect Kori, keep her safe from the dangers of the Wasteland. Why was she so averse to even looking at it? Everyone else was fine when came to wearing it around her, Ingram, Danse, anyone she encountered. But something about her own armor put her off, and Danse couldn’t even begin to guess why.

Behind him, a child’s voice perked up. “Paladin Danse, sir! Permission to… uh… m-may I have your attention, sir?”

Danse leaned back from his suit, wiping his brow with the back of his hand. “Permission granted; at ease, Squire,” he replied, wiping off his hands with a rag. He turned to face the young boy, whose shoulders instantly relaxed once Danse gave the word.

“Sir, Knight Farnsworth and Elder Maxson would like to speak with you. They’re at the Command Deck of the Prydwen.”

“Thank you, Squire,” the Paladin replied, setting down his rag and standing. He placed his hand to his chest. “Ad Victoriam, Soldier.”

“Ad Victoriam, sir!” And with that, the Squire excused himself, walking away somewhere else in the ship. Once the boy was gone, Danse quirked an eyebrow. Both Kori _and_ Arthur wanted to speak with him? He wondered as he straightened himself up on his way to the Command Deck what the two of them could both want of him.

He descended the ladder back down to the viewing room, and found Kori and the Elder in what appeared to be heated conversation.

“As a vault dweller who is unfamiliar with the new world I find myself in, a widower, _and_ a mother in search of her son, the _only_ family she has left, you _have_ to understand that of course my primary loyalty lies with my own heart. I have to find my son. I am more than willing to aid the Brotherhood of Steel, but I have nothing left in this world, Elder. I want to fight for what’s right, but I also want something to _live_ for.”

Elder Maxson turned away from Kori, stroking his beard as he surveyed the Commonwealth below. “I understand and respect your point of view, Knight, but you also must understand that for me to sacrifice my resources to further aid your own agenda, noble or not… it’s a wild assumption for you to think I would grant you such a privilege so soon in your enrollment. I have no qualms about you separating yourself from the Brotherhood in order to find your family, but it is something else entirely what you are asking of me.”

“Well, think of it this way. By agreeing to my request, you may be losing a valuable resource, sure, but at the same time, it’s to keep one of your soldiers safe. To ensure that someone will always have my back, in case I run into trouble. Besides, I have my Pip-Boy. At any time, so long as I am within radio range, you can always call me back to the Prydwen. At the same time, I’ll agree to always carry Vertibird signals, so that I’m always available for speedy recovery. Elder Maxson… I’m not trying to make things difficult for you. All I’m asking is a little bit of help.”

Danse approached slowly; he had never seen Kori so focused. So serious. She was a vestige of calm, and in battle she was quick and efficient, unafraid to rush directly into the fray no matter what the potential injuries may entail. Serious and focused, however, were not words he would normally assign to her. But when Arthur turned back around to regard her again, she held her chin high, dark skin glowing against the rising sun in the distance and freckles like dark stars.

They stared each other down, and then they noticed Danse. Instantly, the tense air dispersed. Kori relaxed, chin dropping and arms that had been behind her back folding at her chest. Maxson, as well, drooped a little. “Paladin, at ease. Please, join us.”

Danse nodded once, walking into the room. He was aware that he likely smelled like grease and sweat, but it was only a passing thought; it was a common scent on the Prydwen, but he still wished he would have been able to present himself better before the Elder.

“You wished to speak with me, sir?” he inquired, pounding a hand to his chest in salutation.

“Please, Danse, I said ‘at ease’. Titles are unnecessary.” Maxson chuckled, and lifted himself on the balls of his feet. Danse didn’t relax; this was too relaxed for Arthur, especially in front of a new recruit. He only acted this way when he wanted Danse to agree with him on something, regardless of what it may have been. Most of the time, Danse agreed, of course; not because he had to, but because he wanted to, but there had been a few exceptions, like the time he had asked the then Knight rank Danse if he would support him on the decision to lower the outsider’s enlistment age to fourteen, instead of sixteen.

“Danse,” Elder Maxson began, voice slow and carefully measured, like expensive wine, “Knight Farnsworth and I have been having a rather heated debate about something she seems rather passionate about. You see, she is new to the Commonwealth, as I’m certain you know, in her own way. She may be over two centuries our senior, but she is just as unfamiliar with the land as we are. Often, Knight Farnsworth will wander from the Prydwen without assigned leave, and will not return for several days. While this isn’t necessarily frowned upon, it does show a sort of… negligence to her allegiance to the Brotherhood. I understand that she has a personal mission-- she is missing a son, and is searching for him-- but what she has just asked of me feels out of line, for a recruit so new and unfamiliar with Brotherhood protocol. Knight, would you care to inform Danse what you asked of me?”

Danse stood awkwardly at attention, clenching his jaw slightly as his gaze flicked from his Elder, to the soldier he was sponsoring. Kori glared momentarily at Maxson, before sighing, and turning to Danse. Her pear-green eyes bore into his umber ones, begging. Pleading. Something he hadn’t seen from her before.

“Paladin Danse, I had been wondering if you would like to accompany me on my personal journeys throughout the Commonwealth. I could use a strong, capable companion. We wouldn’t be traveling under Brotherhood instruction-- it’d just be us, and our own goals.”

The Paladin blinked in surprise. “Me?” He looked to Maxson, who rolled his eyes at Kori, and the answer he wanted from Danse was clear, then. He thought it was a waste of Danse’s time and effort. The Elder wanted him to decline. “I… surely, you could find someone more, uh… attuned to the Commonwealth? A local resident, perhaps?”

“I could,” Kori agreed, but quickly added, “but I’ve found that while, yes, there is strength in diversity, I tend to work better with those with similar battle strategies to my own. Not only that, but so far, I only have a handful of _human_ candidates. Preston Garvey, leader of the Minutemen, and Piper Wright, a news reporter from Diamond City, would be the best candidates if I had to fall back to them, but they’re not what I’m looking for. Cait is a chem addict, and not fit for travel at the current moment. I’m… I’ll be working on her. Deacon, as well, has trust issues, and it’s difficult for me to trust a man that lies on impulse, even if just to yank my leg. The last, MacCready, seems… flighty. I don’t know if I would trust him either, considering he’s just a hired gun.”

She turned to address Danse. “You and I, we have a bond. An understanding of each other that runs deeper than just soldier and sponsor. I trust you with my life… and with the secrets I may uncover about the world, and about myself, while out there on the field. If I had the choice to choose _anyone_ to see the best and worst sides of me, and what this world will make of me… it’d be you.”

Kori sighed, and closed her eyes, before turning to look at Maxson. “But that’s only if Elder Maxson will allow it. We have been discussing it in depth for several days now, actually, over the span of the past month or so. He would like to get your opinion on the matter. Do you _want_ to join me, Danse?”

Danse flapped his mouth, unspeaking for a moment.

“You have every right to decline, Paladin,” Arthur butt in. “After all, Knight Farnsworth is just that-- a Knight. She is a new recruit, and your subordinate. It’s incredible she has the audacity to ask this of us at all. If this request is not in your interests, just let her know.”

His gaze switched between the Elder, then Kori, then back to Maxson. He knew what he was supposed to say… but it wasn’t what he wanted to say. This was difficult. In this case, there was no perfect answer. He could go with Kori, or he could stay, and either way, he would be right, or he would be wrong. It all canceled each other out. This wasn’t like the age of admittance issue, where it was a matter of morality. This was all on him. On what his heart wanted, but on what was best for everyone, as well.

He wanted to go with Kori. She trusted him, more than anyone, it seemed, and that was flattering as all hell. If it weren’t for his ties with the Brotherhood and his standing as Paladin, Danse would have left in a heartbeat by now. But Maxson… Elder Maxson… his loyalty lay with the leader of the Brotherhood. What the Elder wanted was what usually made the most sense. Usually. But, really… he didn’t see why he couldn’t, or shouldn’t go. Kori would most definitely benefit by having a partner, a companion, and why shouldn’t she? Why not him? If he didn’t go, all he would be doing was idling about on the Prydwen, in wait for his next mission, with nothing to do. It made the most logical sense to him to just go with her, and return if needed, like he had heard her suggest on his way in.

It wasn’t often that Danse disobeyed an indirect order-- he could see, in Maxson’s eyes, that he was mentally willing Danse to decline, to remain on the ship-- but Maxson never punished him for ignoring or missing his signs. He knew he wouldn’t now.

“I would be glad to be your companion,” he said, addressing Kori confidently now that he had made his decision.

Both Kori’s and Maxson’s eyes widened in surprise, and they simultaneously said “Really?” in varying degrees of elation and shock. They looked at each other, and then quickly recomposed themselves, Arthur speaking first.

“Are you… certain, Paladin? If you feel as if your time and energy could be better utilized elsewhere--”

“But that’s just the thing, Elder,” Danse replied. “I feel like _this_ will be the best use of my time. As Knight Farnsworth’s sponsor, she is my responsibility. While she is more than capable of venturing out on her own, I am both honored and relieved that she would allow me to accompany her after all this time. I have to keep an eye on her somehow.”

Maxson’s hard look softened a little, and he sighed and folded his arms. “Very well then. Paladin Danse, your new orders are to protect Knight Farnsworth at any and all costs while she is out and about the Commonwealth. Am I clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Danse said, trying not to beam in front of the still skeptical Elder. He pounded a hand to his chest. “Ad Victoriam, Elder Maxson.”

“Ad Victoriam, Paladin.”

And with that, Maxson turned back around, gazing out the glass window back out into the Commonwealth. The conversation was over.

Danse turned to Kori, and she beamed openly at him now that the Elder’s back was turned. “Get your things,” Kori instructed him. “I’ll wait for you on the flight deck. Pack well though; I don’t tend to settle down in one place for more than half a day.”

Danse nodded in understanding, and excused himself to do as she had asked.

 

* * *

 

“Take us to Fort Hagen,” Kori commanded into the headset once she and Danse were both aboard a Vertibird. The pilot gave a thumbs up, and took flight. Then, Kori switched to the passenger channel, and Danse did the same.

“Why do we need to go to Fort Hagen?” he inquired, quirking a brow as he held on for the ride.

“It’s the closest I know of to where I need to go next to find Shaun,” the vault dweller replied, gazing out over the landscape as they flew. “My knowledge of the Commonwealth is not up to date, shall we say, so Fort Hagen is as far southwest as I know in terms of location names these days.”

“Southwest?” Danse tensed up, and furrowed his brow. “You do know that there’s nothing but radiated wasteland southwest, right?”

“Yep.”

There was a pause, but she didn’t explain herself further. Danse frowned.

“Which… means it’s hostile and dangerous to humans due to the massive amounts of radiation.”

“Uh-huh.”

Now this was frustrating. He decided to just come out and ask. “Kori, are we going into the Glowing Sea?”

“Yes. We are. Don’t worry, I came prepared. I am _overflowing_ with RadAway and Rad-X, and there’s a little something waiting for us at Fort Hagen. Well, for me, but it’s gonna help us.”

Danse’s stomach churned. This was _not_ what he had been anticipating when Kori asked him to accompany her out into the Commonwealth. First mission she asked him on and actually wanted him to come with her, and it was right into the Glowing Sea? “At _least_ tell me you know exactly where you’re going _in_ the Glowing Sea, Knight.”

“Uh…” Kori cringed, and glanced back at Danse apologetically. “... south… west?”

“Outstanding,” the Paladin groaned sarcastically. “What are we _looking_ for in the Glowing Sea, then?”

“That, I can answer,” the vault dweller replied. “We’re looking for an ex-Institute scientist by the name of Virgil. A member gone rogue, went to hide out there because no one wants to go. Including you, it seems.”

“Soldier, I can assure you that if you saw the Glowing Sea for yourself, you’d have your reservations as well.” Danse huffed, and looked away. “How do you know who he is?”

“That detective I told you about, he helped me find the man who murdered my husband. Then, we took his brain to the Memory Den, in Goodneighbor. A doctor there helped us process the killer, Kellogg’s, memories. His last mission before we killed him was to find and kill Virgil, due to his insider’s knowledge about the Institute.”

“How do you pick apart a dead man’s brain for secrets?”

Kori bit her lip. “I… don’t think you want all the details. It’s pretty grisly.”

The Paladin frowned, but shrugged it off. He could probably handle the details, but he wasn’t going to force Kori to relive it if she wasn’t comfortable. “Very well then. I’m… not thrilled about this, but so long as you have the means to keep us alive, I’ll follow you, however deep you go.”

The vault dweller turned around, and Danse’s heart felt strange and light at the grateful smile she gave him. “Thank you, Danse. I promise I won’t be long. I know it’s going to be dangerous… we’ll be in and out as fast as we can. Ad Victoriam, right?”

“Ad Victoriam, indeed, Soldier.” Danse beamed, and found himself staring at her long after she’d turned back around. A few minutes later, however, he added: “If this Dr. Virgil _doesn’t_ have a way to find your son, I recommend exterminating him without hesitation, given that he was a member of the Institute.”

Kori gave him a look, but said nothing.

Soon, the Vertibird reached its destination. Kori hopped out of the vehicle, and Danse did the same shortly thereafter. No sooner had his feet hit the ground that the Vertibird took flight, heading back towards the Prydwyn on the other side of the Commonwealth.

The Paladin placed his hands on his hips, Power Armor whirring. “Alright, Soldier. You said there’s something here that’s going to help you?”

“I did indeed,” Kori replied. She gestured for the Paladin to follow her, and after a bit of hoisting and jumping around, they were on the roof of Fort Hagen. She turned a corner towards the center, and there, neatly tucked away, was a suit of Power Armor. It was a standard set of T-60 armor, but with flames on the chestpiece, shoulders, and other sections of the armor.

Danse slowed to a halt as Kori began rummaging through her pack for a Fusion Core. “I thought you didn’t like using Power Armor,” he questioned her, staring at the suit of armor curiously.

“Oh, I don’t.” She was very straightforward about it, as she pounded the core into place. “Of course, for very personal reasons you don’t get to hear. But if it’s between this and slow cooking in a radioactive wasteland, it doesn’t seem like I’ve got a lot of good choices.”

Danse frowned. “Power Armor could be the difference between life and death out here, or anywhere.”

“Yeah,” Kori agreed, “but so could a bullet to the face, or a Fat Man and a mini nuke. Power Armor is slow, it’s bulky, it’s noisy, and it’s just not my style. But for the sake of this mission, I’ll make an exception and just wear the damn thing.”

She stepped into the suit, wiggling her arms and feet around to get accustomed to the feeling. The Paladin cringed when he saw her stumble, catching herself against the wall next to her. Once she found her footing, she huffed, and grabbed her gun off of the ground.

“Okay,” the vault dweller sighed. “Let’s get going. The walking will get easier the more I do it. It’s not my first rodeo in Power Armor, I swear. I’m just rusty.”

“Right,” Danse replied skeptically. “Well, we’ve got some distance to go. Let’s hope that will be enough practice for you.”

Kori nodded, and the two of them made their way off of the roof and southward bound, towards the Glowing Sea. They stopped at a nearby blood clinic, and after taking care of the bug infestation there, were able to snag a couple dozen blood packs, much to Kori’s delight.

“Radaway _and_ blood packs up to our eyes,” she marveled aloud as they headed on the east side of the lake. “We’re going to do just fine out there.”

“I still think that’s debatable,” Danse countered as they walked side by side. She looked so awkward in her Power Armor, like she was wearing someone’s clothes that she’d just killed for. “You don’t know what fresh hell you’re up against, Knight. I’ve only been there once myself, and that was just on the edge. The mole rats there are heavily irradiated and rabid, and that’s just grazing the surface. There will be Deathclaws, Radscorpions… I think you _think_ you’re ready for this, but you’re not.”

“Danse, come on, give me a little faith,” Kori pleaded, shooting him an unimpressed look. “We survived Fort Strong together, we can brave this storm, too.”

“If we run into a radstorm _while_ we’re in the Glowing Sea, then we’re really going to be in trouble,” the Paladin replied to that, narrowing his eyes. “Just… prepare yourself for the worst. Maybe then, and _only_ then, we’ll get through this in one piece.”

The vault dweller rolled her eyes, bringing up a hand to her helmet and fiddling with the dials for the radio. “Danse, I promise you, we’re going to be fine. Even if I’m not prepared, I’ve learned to adjust to these sorts of things. Being back on the surface world for the last three or four months has hit me hard, but I’ve taken the best out of the worst of the situations I’ve stumbled into.”

As she finished explaining herself, the radio crackled to life, as she had finally found Diamond City radio. A bouncing tune started up, one Danse had heard only a couple times.

“Oh yeah, that’s it,” Kori chuckled, nodding her head a little. “The Wanderer. This was my jam before the war. And before I settled down.”

She started singing along before Danse had an opportunity to comment. He pursed his lips and shook his head, assuming his perfect soldier’s discipline. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as fun as he had anticipated, but this was his mission; protect Kori at all costs. That was what Maxson had assigned him. That’s what he was going to do. His mood did eventually lighten as they walked and she continued to sing, but he needed to remain focused. They were out in the open now, and it was just the two of them. Kori could let her guard down if she wanted, and he would reprimand her later for it if they were attacked, but he needed to keep his eyes open.

Protect Kori at all costs. That was his mission. He would not fail.

 

* * *

 

“‘Crawl out through the fallout, baby, you know what I mean, Crawl out through the fallout, 'cause they said this bomb was clean, If you cannot find the way, just listen for my…’  oh…”

Kori’s singing had continued throughout their travels southward bound, and she had remained surprisingly vigilant even through it all, much to Danse’s surprise. He knew that she was adequate in battle, but even being slightly distracted, she was still on her toes. But her reaction upon finally reaching the Glowing Sea was just as he had expected-- utter shock, despondence, and a sense of overwhelming isolation.

He had felt the same way, too, upon seeing it for the first time himself.

They had rested a couple miles back last night, talked just as they always had, and continued their journey the moment the sun rose over the horizon. Now, as she stood atop the hill they’d just mounted, eyes wide and jaw agape as she removed her helmet, Danse came up next to her, clapping a metallic hand to her armored back. “There it is,” he said to her half-heartedly. “The Glowing Sea. Not what you were expecting, was it?”

Kori’s only response was a dejected, “God…”

Before they had arrived, Danse had been waiting for this, for Kori to realize just how wrong she had been about the Glowing Sea being something that just _anyone_ could manage, including herself, of all people. But now that she actually was seeing and reacting to the damage, he felt a twist and a pang in his heart. The reflection of the dead trees and the glow in the distance in her eyes made his heart ache.

“If… if you don’t think you’re ready to head in there,” Danse began, but Kori cut him off with a quick wave of her hand.

“There’s probably only _one_ person in the whole Commonwealth that knows how to get into the Institute. And that person is likely in there. This is my _only_ chance to be able to find my son.”

“If you’re willing to wait, the Brotherhood is working on finding the Institute themselves. I’m certain that they aren’t--”

“ _Danse_.”

Kori and Danse came to face each other. The Paladin couldn’t help the cringe that crossed his features upon seeing the fearful determination in her eyes, and he wondered if he had missed it before, when he was first warning her about the Glowing Sea and it seemed as if she had been brushing him off.

Danse had a way of reading people when he was out on the field. She was holding herself high, her jaw was set, but he knew that, deep down, she was _terrified._ Maybe had been this whole time, and he had missed it because he had been in a more social mindset than a soldier’s one. He cursed himself silently, before sighing and turning away.

“I understand,” he said to her softly. “Alright then. We head in and make this fast, watch our rads, and each other. I’ll… I’ve got your back. Don’t worry.”

The vault dweller snickered. “Weren’t you the one who was whining about how dangerous this place is? Don’t try to play tough guy now.”

They both laughed, but there was no strength in it for either of them. They stood together on top of that hill, staring into the Glowing Sea.

Two minutes passed. Then, Kori sighed, placed her helmet back on her head, and lifted her laser rifle up to her shoulder. “Well, it’s not getting any less radiated while we stand and stare at it. Not noticeably, anyways. We’re losing daylight, and I doubt we want to get lost in there at night. Let’s go, before anything tries to stop us.”

She forged the way ahead without further hesitation, and Danse reluctantly followed.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter based on true events (aka that time I got my ass handed to me by two deathclaws during my plunge into the Glowing Sea.)

It was just their luck that a Radstorm just happened to roll in just as they were getting into the Glowing Sea. The two of them stared up at the sky, then at each other, before forging ahead regardless of the situation. The sounds of their Power Armor were drowned out as the wind and thunder raged all around them. Often, Kori would pause to check her map, which located points of interest even in this desolate area of the Commonwealth. It felt strange to Danse, being unable to see her face for once. Kori often wore either a simple beanie, or nothing at all, but now she had on her Power Armor helmet. Had her armor not been customized, he wouldn’t have been able to tell her apart from any other Brotherhood Knight. This would have just felt like a specialized recon mission. But, with the knowledge that it was Kori, searching for Shaun, rather than a search for pre-war tech… it felt far more important.

Danse frowned anxiously as he watched the Rads tick away on his Power Suit, feeling gradually more and more ill the longer they remained. But Kori was thorough; she made certain to check every location on the map, and even some that were unmarked. She tossed Danse a pack of Radaway every now and then, which the Paladin accepted graciously, but he knew that they wouldn’t be able to last long even with as much Radaway as Kori had brought. It was possible for some people to build up a tolerance to the drug, though it was very rare. In a situation like this, however, the odds significantly increased, and if the Radaway stopped working for either of them, they were going to be in severe trouble.

“Soldier!” Danse called out at one point as night was beginning to fall. “I highly suggest we find a low-rad spot to hunker down for the night. Night is dangerous in the Glowing Sea; even if we can’t sense the change in day, the creatures that live here _can_.”

Kori stopped, and glanced back at Danse, before shaking her head. “Just a little longer,” she said, checking her map again.

Danse shook his head, coming to stand in front of her. “Negative. It is my mission to keep you safe and out of harm’s way. That includes making certain you are doing the most to keep yourself at peak performance. All this radiation and Radaway isn’t good for our systems.”

“Yeah, okay, so the sooner we find what we’re looking for,” she argued, “the sooner we can leave. We keep going. We’re doing fine.”

“I’m sorry,” Danse said, taking a hold of one of the handles on the front of her Power Armor to keep her from turning away. “I’m going to have to stop you. And if you choose to keep going, I will pull rank on you and demand it as your superior. Should you still choose to deny me, I will write you up--”

“Danse, the man who could be the key to finding my _son_ is out here somewhere!” Kori shouted above the Radstorm. She grasped at his arm, trying to pull him away without damaging her own armor. “We’re on a time limit here! He could be mutating into something nasty, or worse--”

“If this doesn’t work out, we’ll find another solution! Knight Farnsworth, I am _ordering_ you to find shelter--”

“I don’t have to listen to you out here!” Kori retorted, voice growing louder still. “We’re on _my_ mission on my terms! I don’t have to follow your orders!”

“The hell you don’t! I’m your commanding officer!”

“Damn it Danse! I am _not_ going to lose my baby!”

She finally shoved him away, uncaring of how the handle detached from her Power Armor. The two stood staring at one another for a long, unwavering moment, before a blur of motion knocked Danse several feet back, and Kori even further. His helmet crunched and skidded along the ground, before he came to a stop. He laid there, groaning as his head spun, but a familiar roar shook him from his stupor and nearly lifted him to his feet like magic.

“Son of a bitch!” Kori shouted, firing her laser rifle at an Alpha Deathclaw as rapidly as she could. The beast charged forwards towards her again with a rabid cry, again smacking her like a doll, and Danse watched in horror as she was tossed over a hill and out of his sight.

“ _Kori!_ ” The Paladin yelled, and tried to make his way towards her. He was forced to skid to a halt, falling to his ass again, when a _second_ Deathclaw landed before him. A Matriarch. ‘ _Son of a bitch! An Alpha and a Matriarch. They may have a nest nearby. We waltzed right into their damn territory._ ’ The beast lifted itself to its full height, staring down at Danse with a threatening rumble.

He wouldn’t admit it, but for a second or two, he was frozen in fear. Then, Danse quickly cleared his head, and shuffled to his feet, opening fire not a moment later. “Damn it, damn!” he cried out, landing a few shots on the creature’s weak, sensitive belly, before turning tail to run and reload. He lifted a finger to his ear as he jumped out of the way of a swipe from the massive beast.

“Deathclaw! Condition red! Fire! Don’t let it get close!” He prayed, to everything he knew, that Kori heard him. He would have said more, but a claw slamming into the dirt directly next to his head cut him short. He cursed, jumping out of the way and shooting once again at the Matriarch’s stomach.

The massive beast roared its agony, narrowing its eyes down at Danse and rushing into him, head on. The Paladin was tossed like a paper ball from the force of the impact, flying several feet back yet again and landing on his back. His vision swirled before him, and at first, he saw two Deathclaws, and feared that it was the Alpha, having finished with Kori and come to finish the job. He realized, not a moment too soon, that it was just vision problems, and rolled to the side before the Deathclaw’s talons could tear through his Power Armor like tin foil. He rolled again, to the other side, when the other claw came down, but now he was effectively trapped beneath the creature, who looked just about ready to open its maw to bite off his head.

Danse had to think, quickly. Now. He had only a moment to check that his gun was still adequately loaded, before holding it above himself. As the Deathclaw lunged down to take a bite at him, he fired the weapon directly into the monster’s mouth, yelling as spittle and blood dripped onto his helmet.

The Deathclaw Matriarch reeled back, screaming and thrashing its head back and forth. It seemed, somehow, Danse had managed to blind the creature with the pain, even if it was not yet dead. As the beast stumbled back, clawing at its face and throat, the Paladin hurried to his feet, yelling as he charged forwards. With the help of his Power Suit, he was able to tackle the Deathclaw to the ground, knocking it flat on its back. The resulting crash to the ground rattled them both, but Danse was quicker in regaining his senses. He grunted as he shoved his laser rifle into the beast’s neck, firing several rapid shots into it before he was once again tossed off. Sensors in his suit went wild-- his left arm was damaged, and in need of repair, and the left eye glass was cracked.

He jumped to his feet, adrenaline surging through his veins, but ended up knocked down again by a wild, random swipe by the injured beast. He grunted as his head hit the ground, ears ringing with the force of it.

And, of course, he should be so lucky-- Danse gasped as he found that his fusion core was nearly depleted.

A tail hitting the back of his suit forced another gasp out of him, and he forced himself to roll to one side, away from the blinded, staggering Deathclaw. Slowly, he lifted himself to his feet, setting his laser rifle aside and opting for something a bit different; a pulse grenade.

Surely, this would finish the job. Or, at least, disable the Deathclaw so Danse could hurry and find Kori.

The Matriarch roared and thrashed, breathing harsh from so many shots to its mouth and throat. Its jaw gaped-- a perfect target. Danse waited with baited breath. He fiddled with the pin. She was thrashing too much, for the time being,

Wait for it…

The Deathclaw took a stumbling step closer to Danse, searching for him with its few remaining senses.

_Wait for it…_

The Matriarch turned slowly. It’d finally sensed him.

_Strike!_

Danse yelled as he threw the pulse grenade, pulling the pin and leaping to one side as the monster snapped with its jaws… swallowing the pulse grenade. The Paladin rolled as much as he could in the bulky suit of armor, as far away as he could, and making certain to face away the moment the grenade exploded. The sound of gurgling, bubbling blood and wet scratching at a chest cavity that was blown wide open made his stomach curdle… but the drop of the body was relief enough that he managed to keep his stomach steady.

Danse leapt to his feet, spinning around… and then deciding that that was a bad idea, the pool of blood and nearly completely severed head of the Matriarch almost making him vomit. What mattered was that he was able to kill the beast. He was alive.

… and Kori?

The Paladin spun on his heel, breaking into a sprint the moment he remembered. _Kori_ . She had been facing an _Alpha_ . If she wasn’t dead, her condition was going to be far, _far_ worse than his own. Danse bolted to the last place he’d seen her, Power Armor boots causing the dry, brittle earth beneath him to crack. He didn’t dare call out her name, lest the Alpha hear him. Better to keep a low profile for now, and shout later when he knew for certain he was safe. Or, at least, as safe as it gets in the Glowing Sea.

Danse jumped to the peak of the hill he’d seen her tossed over, and came to a dead halt. The Alpha lay dead… but Kori was nowhere to be found.

“Knight!” Danse shouted into his communicator. “Knight Farnsworth, report?” He rushed down to the Deathclaw corpse, searching the surrounding area for signs of the vault dweller. He paused when his boot knocked against something metal. When he crouched down to investigate… it was her Power Armor’s left arm.

He picked it up, throat growing tight as his thoughts began to run away with him. Injured? Dying? Fleeing without him? No, that wasn’t like Kori. She would stand and fight to the very last. Then where..?

His comms were static, before they leapt to life. “... northwest…. Red Rocket… hunker down… were right…”

“Knight, I can’t-- you’re coming in rough,” Danse grunted, fiddling with his own knobs in an attempt to get a clearer signal. “Red Rocket to the northwest?”

He looked around, until he spotted it. There was no further word from Kori, but he made his way there regardless. Hopefully, she was inside, recovering, or at least laying low until he could get there to help her.

 

* * *

 

Kori jumped when Danse burst through the crooked door, wading through the water towards her. She was sitting on a refrigerator, out of her Power Armor, and fiddling with the exoskeleton on the left arm.

“Have you lost your mind!?” Danse demanded to know, dropping her left arm piece onto the fridge at her side. “Why are you out of your Power Armor? Have you forgotten where we are?!”

The vault dweller furrowed her brow, and gestured all around her. “Not radiated in here, Danse. We’re fine. You can leave yours, too, if you want.”

“Negative,” Danse replied, still fuming. “Empty as this location may be, there are still threats outside that could make themselves known at any second.”

Kori just shrugged, taking the arm piece and working on reattaching it to her suit. “Well, thanks for the hand,” she joked, waving it around before putting it into place.

“Hilarious,” Danse hissed, taking a step forwards. “But that doesn’t make me forget what you did out there. Not only did you disobey a direct order from your sponsor and superior officer, but doing so nearly got the both of us killed! And! On top of that, you left me behind! You didn’t come to aid me when you finished with the Alpha, separating our team and weakening our effectiveness as a single unit! You violated the single, most important rule of Brotherhood field tactics, and that is to stick together, no matter _what_.”

"Jesus, Danse, why is this such a big deal? People get split up in fights all the time!"

"I've lost and been alone for long enough, thank you very much, Knight! I don't want to..."

She looked up at Danse again, and cringed as his angry expression began to turn to infuriated, wild and violent, and then horrified with himself as he realized his words.

"I... I'm tired of being alone."

Kori set down the Power Armor arm, rubbing her temple nervously.

“Danse… I’m… I’m sorry, that I left you behind. It was the wrong thing to do, and I know that. Even when I got in here, I had a sick feeling in my gut, like I fucked up. The truth is, I got… I got scared.”

His expression softened a little, but he was still stern. “Scared.”

She sighed, and held up her left arm, revealing deep gouges that were slowly healing due to a stimpack she’d administered earlier. “And injured. By the time I knocked that Alpha down, everything was quiet. I was disoriented; I had no idea where to go to find you, and my comms were weird. It screams in my ear every time I try to use it. I’m glad you got my last one-- or, it seems like you did, given that you’re here.”

“I did…” Danse sighed, leaning back against a wall and holding his Power Armor helmet to his side. “I understand your desire to recuperate, but unless you’re mortally wounded, I would, in the future, advise that you find me, first. Not only is it more tactically advantageous to stick together, but it’s also my mission to make sure you’re alright, and I thought… I was afraid I’d failed. Hence my anger when I initially entered the truck stop. You worried me.”

Kori stopped working on her Power Armor to regard Danse for a moment. “... You’re right. That makes sense. I’ll work on keeping my senses more in the future. Just… remember, I don’t have military background. That was Gabriel’s strong suit. I was just a lawyer. It doesn’t come naturally for me to face danger head on and _not_ feel like I need to lick my wounds after. You may not believe it yet, but… I do a lot more retreating than you might think.”

“I don’t frown upon that at all,” Danse replied, coming to crouch before Kori. “While it’s not my style in particular, I don’t find anything wrong with longer periods of recuperation. Which is why I’m so confused as to why we didn’t come here in the first place..?”

The vault dweller glanced around her, and shook her head, smiling sheepishly. “We hadn’t been attacked by Deathclaws yet. I was overconfident in my ability to scour over the Glowing Sea without much opposition. Of course, Fate just _had_ to kick me in the ass for that one. Radscorpions scare the shit out of me, and mole rats are just annoying, but we were handling those alright. And then… well…” Kori pointed outside. “That happened.”

Danse hummed in understanding. “Overconfidence is more common among Brotherhood members than I would like to admit, so I can’t really fault you, though I do wish you would have practiced more caution. Regardless, defeating that Deathclaw was quite a feat of combat prowess. Well done, soldier.”

Kori smirked, patting her Power Armor’s arm. “Thanks, Danse. I’ll be more careful from here on out, and we’ll stick closer together.”

“Oustanding,” he replied to that, nodding in acknowledgement and fitting his helmet back over his head. “Especially considering that your comms are fried. We can’t afford to lose each other at this point.”

“No,” she agreed, “we can’t. I’ll lead the way, but I’ll follow your orders.”

“I believe that would be the wisest course of action. Contrary to what you might believe, I’d like you to remain alive.”

The vault dweller snickered at that, before a loud beeping caught both of their attention. The whirring from Danse’s Power Armor slowed to a halt, and he cursed as his limbs locked into place.

“... Damn it. Core’s out. I… I didn’t bring any spares.”

“Oh, that’s nothing.” Kori grabbed her pack, fishing through it and procuring a fresh fusion core from within. “I’ve got more of these than I know what to do with. With that being said… you still owe me one.”

She walked behind him, removing the old core and inserting the new. Instantly, Danse’s armor rumbled back to life, and he sighed with relief. “Thank you,” he said as she waded through the water back to her own Power Armor.

“Like I said, I have too many fusion cores. Now, I think it’s time we headed out, and finished our business here, as soon as possible.”

“You honestly feel ready to go after ten minutes?” the Paladin inquired, folding his arms.

“I slept last night,” she replied simply, already in her suit and heading towards the door. “I’ll get some decent rest once we have our answers. We stick together, keep our search thorough and neat, and hopefully, we’ll be out of here by tomorrow night. Hopefully sooner.”

She pounded a hand to her chest, the clanking of metal loud in the small space. “Ad Victoriam, right?”

Inside his mask, Danse cringed at the thought of spending another full day in the Glowing Sea, but he mirrored Kori’s salute anyways. “Ad Victoriam.”

The two nodded to each other, and each took one last, rad-free breath, before heading back out into the Glowing Sea.

 

* * *

 

The second night was already well upon them by the time they had passed the famed Crater of Adam, and avoided the insane cultists harbored within. Both Kori and Danse were exhausted-- the vault dweller was missing a leg to her Power Armor, and several hydraulic tubes had been dislodged, making movement that much more difficult. She’d abandoned her helmet some time ago, struggling to catch her breath inside, and they found the mouthpiece clogged with debris from the Atlantic offices.

Danse was doing little better. His helmet, as well, had been damaged beyond repair from another Deathclaw attack (thankfully, it had just been one), but the left knee of his armor was clicking suspiciously, and the hips refused to swivel hardly at all, greatly decreasing his mobility. Progress had been slow, and tedious, but true to Kori’s word, she followed Danse’s every order and stuck close. The Paladin could not have been more pleased. That is, unless they were out of the Glowing Sea. But, given the circumstances, Danse supposed that things could be significantly worse.

Other than their armor malfunctions, the two were in fine health. True to her word, Kori had brought plenty of stimpacks and Radaway, and Danse thanked her for each and every one. Truly, it seemed as if she had an endless supply. She looked exhausted and worn, and Danse was certain that he himself was not doing much better, but still, she soldiered on, a singular goal in her mind; find Virgil.

Upon mounting a steep hill, Kori slid down carefully, only managing an exhausted smirk when Danse slid down on his butt instead. She helped him to his feet once he was at the bottom, and they turned to face the mouth of a rocky cave. The vault dweller sighed, shoulders heaving.

“This is the last place we can check reasonably,” she told him, checking her Pip-Boy. “Ready to head in?”

“I could use another Radaway pack,” he confessed, clearing his throat. “Not feeling the best.”

“I got you.” She tossed him said pack, and Danse administered it quickly, so as not to keep the woman waiting. He gave her a nod, signifying he was finished, and the two cautiously made their way inside.

Kori’s breath caught in her throat when she heard the whir of machinery. As they rounded the corner, they were faced with two turrets. She lurched back, afraid of being shot, but the weapons remained dormant.

“Proceed with caution. Don’t get over-excited,” Danse warned, picking up on the increased intake in her breath.

The vault dweller gulped, and nodded, holding up a shotgun and proceeding carefully, slowly. While she managed to avoid the cans hanging from the ceiling, Danse brushed against them just slightly, a noise or two resulting from it. Still, the turrets didn’t make a sound.

Kori rounded the next corner, into the center of the cave, and stopped short, eyes going wide. Danse froze where he was, uncertain what she was seeing, until a deep, grating voice spoke up.

“Hold it! Take it nice and slow, no sudden moves… I _know_ you're from the Institute, so where’s Kellogg? Huh? Trying to sneak up on me while you distract me? It’s not going to work! I’m not stupid. I knew they’d send him after me!”

Danse snarled, his heart thrumming angrily in his chest. _Super Mutant._ His instincts told him to charge. To attack immediately. But what the monster was talking about… Kellogg… the Institute… could it..? No…

“Are you… Virgil?” Kori ventured cautiously, lowering her shotgun slowly.

“You know damn well I am! What are you doing here?”

Danse’s own eyes went wide. _Shit. Dr. Virgil was a Super Mutant._

“I need your help,” Kori begged.

Virgil snarled. “My help? For what? How did you even find me, anyway?”

“It doesn’t matter. What _does_ , is what you know about the Institute.”

“So they _did_ send you, didn’t they? You’re working with Kellogg!”

At this point, it was clear the vault dweller was growing nervous as she was losing control of the situation. “Kellogg’s been… taken care of,” she replied hurriedly, hoping to appease the mutated man.

It seemed to work. There was a pause. “What? He’s… dead? Don’t you lie to me!”

Kori flinched. Danse got ready for a fight, blood pulsing in his veins and ready to go. “I’m not lying. I killed him myself.”

“You?” Virgil sounded like he didn’t believe it. “Kellogg was relentless… There’s a reason the Institute used him to do their dirty work for so many years. I knew they’d send him after me; tried to prepare for it. But I still wasn’t sure I’d make it… And so _you_ … you killed him, eh? Then… what _do_ you want from me?”

Emboldened, Kori took a near miniscule step forwards. “Why did you leave the Institute? I know you came from there.”

Virgil snorted in shock. “You know about the escape!? But how?!” He regained his senses a moment later. “No, it doesn’t matter. I’m not going back… I can’t go back. Look at me! _Why_ are you even here? What do you want?!”

He was beginning to sound more and more aggressive, and Danse was getting more and more twitchy. He wasn’t going to lose another friend to a Super Mutant. Not again.

“I need whatever information you’ve got.” Kori sounded more confident, now that their search for Virgil had finally come to an end. “Anything to help me get inside the Institute.”

“I’m sorry, _what_ .” Virgil sounded bemused. “You want to get _in_ to the Institute? Are you insane!? Nevermind how nearly _impossible_ that is, even if you _were_ to succeed, it’d almost _certainly_ end in your immediate death! What reason could you _possibly_ have for taking that kind of risk?”

Kori had completely lowered her shotgun now, and her expression shifted into one of deep sadness and pain. She averted her gaze from Virgil, staring towards the ground.

“I’m… I’m trying to find my son. The Institute kidnapped him.”

Another pause washed over them.

“Oh. Oh, no. I… I had no idea. I’m sorry.”

The blood boiling in Danse’s ears calmed some at the morose tone Virgil now harbored. He hadn’t been stupefied yet, it seemed, meaning he only recently became a Super Mutant. He still had his human emotions and intelligence.

Virgil sighed. “Yeah. The Institute has taken people from the Commonwealth in the past. If your son is one of them… I can understand why you’d want to get in there. I can help, _but_ … I’m going to need something in return.”

‘ _Say no,_ ’ Danse thought desperately, holding his breath. ‘ _Please say no._ ’

“You help me, and I’ll help you.”

“Alright.”

 _Damn it_.

Kori glanced over at Danse, gesturing him over with a nod of her head. “Hold on,” she said to Virgil in a calm, level voice. “I want you know, now that we’re on better terms, I’m not alone. Danse. Come over.”

His feet felt like lead, but Danse emerged from around the corner, taking in the sight of the Super Mutant Virgil with clear disgust. Virgil granted Danse the same expression, upon seeing the emblem on his Power Armor.

“He won’t hurt you,” the vault dweller assured him. “ _Right_ , Danse?”

Danse said nothing, but he lowered his weapon, eyes still filled with deep hatred. Virgil opted to ignore any further exchange with the Paladin, and returned his attention to Kori.

“If I help you,” Virgil explained, “you’re going to do something for me. Before I was forced to leave, I was working on a serum to reverse this mutation. It could return me to normal, do you understand? So if you get in there, I need you to find it in my old office, and bring it to me. I think that’s pretty reasonable, in exchange for helping you. Alright. Let’s talk details.”

Kori nodded once. Danse scowled.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, just a reminder that reviews are always appreciated! They help keep me going and I love hearing feedback from you guys <3

The two of them exited the cave with new information on how to get into the Institute, and just exactly what they needed to do. The vault dweller certainly had a new pep in her step as a result. Even still, something about her seemed… very off. There were deep circles under her eyes, and she looked hungry, despite having been eating reasonably throughout their entire journey.

“Alright,” Kori stated, tilting her neck from one side to the other. “Now, we just have to get _out_ of the Glowing Sea. Should be easy enough, a day’s trip. Let’s try to make it quick.”

“I know you’re excited with this new info on how to get to your son, but I think you need to take it easy. You don’t look well, Knight.” Danse placed a hand on her shoulder, deeply concerned.

She just shrugged. “Don’t worry about me. The sooner we get out of here, the better. Here; have another Radaway.”

Danse furrowed his brow. He hadn’t asked, and, really, he didn’t need another one. He’d used one just before they had gone inside the cave. Something felt off, but before he could point it out, Kori replied, “Just… to hold on to for later.”

She began walking before he could open his mouth to address her odd nature. With a sigh, Danse shook his head, and began to follow. She was right; the sooner they left the Glowing Sea, the better. Clearly, their time here was taking more of a physical strain on her than she was letting on.

For a while, things were fine. Their fights were relatively easy, and there was a blissful lack in Deathclaws. However, the more the two of them walked, the slower Kori became. It wasn’t long before Danse was actually having to _slow_ down for her, rather than try to keep up.

It was only when she collapsed, a little more than halfway back to the Commonwealth, that he realized something was seriously wrong.

“Kori!?” He panicked, lifting her carefully and inspecting her face. Her eyes fluttered weakly, and her cheeks had grown more hollow and sunken in just a few hours.

This wasn’t normal exhaustion, or starvation. This was radiation poisoning.

“Kori!” Danse shouted, and smacked her across the cheek, snapping her back into focus. “Your rads are too damn high! Get a Radaway, now!”

At first, his command didn’t seem to register. Then, after a moment… it did. And she cringed, and looked away.

“We need to keep going,” she muttered, trying to get to her feet, but Danse held her firm.

“Knight. Radaway. Now.”

Kori mumbled something he could not here. He demanded her to repeat.

“I said I don’t have anymore.”

Despite the heat from his Power Armor, and the heat of the Glowing Sea, the Paladin’s veins still turned to ice. He stepped away as Kori got to her feet, eyes wide as he looked her over. She looked around, as if having lost her sense of direction.

“Damn it, Knight,” he cursed, pulling out his laser rifle. With his free hand, he took a hold of Kori by the one handle she still had left on her Power Armor, and started pulling her along, trying to speed their progress. “Take a deep breath, and concentrate. You can do this. We’re going to get you help.”

Kori looked like she was about to argue, but she was cut short as she suddenly hurled, bent over and entire frame shaking with the force of it. Once she’d regained her senses, she shook her head, and sighed.

“There’s a vault, close to the edge of the Glowing Sea. Vault 95. We’ll try there. Keep moving.”

Danse nodded, and hurried the two of them along.

The sun was beginning to set by the time Danse found the place. During that timespan, Kori’s condition had deteriorated significantly. He’d wanted only to find the Radaway and move on, but given the circumstances, it was likely he’d unfortunately be spending his evening in a vault filled with drugs and corpses. Kori truly could not travel any further, and he was growing desperate to find the woman some Radaway. Clumps of hair were just falling from her head, and her entire body shook.

Where better to look for medicine than a Vault? Kori had the right idea. Even abandoned, they were usually always well stocked. It was unfortunate that this one was so filled to the brim with narcotic substances, but at the same time, it gave Danse even more hope that there would be medicine laying around somewhere.

The raiders that had taken up residence were more of an annoyance than a real threat-- the both of them, primarily Danse, were both able to take down the raiders with little issue. He guided the vault dweller in gently, her armor whirring loudly as it overheated, parts clinking together from being broken or bent.

Suddenly, a leg locked up, and Kori fell to the floor, first to her knees, and then face first.

“Son of a bitch,” the Paladin cursed, glancing around nervously, before exiting his own Power Armor. Then, he turned the valve on the back of Kori’s suit, pulling out the sick woman and into his arms. He hoisted one of her arms over his shoulder, still holding his laser rifle one-handed.  “Stay with me, Soldier. _Stay conscious._ That’s an _order_ , understood?”

“I’m… trying…” Kori ground out, panting and dazed. “My… my skin is… crawling…” As she spoke, her nose began to bleed again, dribbling down her face and onto her shirt.

“Damn it,” Danse cursed, his heart pounding in his ears. He glanced around desperately, searching for any sign of an infirmary as he scoured the various rooms for any Radaway.

Eventually, Danse ended up setting her down in one of the bedrooms on a couch, pressing a gun into her hands. “Kori, listen to me,” he begged. “I’m going to find you some Radaway in here. Do you understand? You _need_ to stay conscious, so you can defend yourself if someone comes in here other than me. Repeat it back to me.”

“Stay conscious,” the vault dweller mumbled, “to defend myself.”

“Keep saying that,” the Paladin commanded, before rushing out of the room. He ran throughout the complex, opening up drawers, ammo boxes, anything and everything that could fit a Radaway package inside. The longer he searched, the more hopeless he began to feel. Kori was in no condition to travel, but he couldn’t possibly leave her here. He could summon a Vertibird, but more likely than not, Elder Maxson would not be pleased to hear that, on their first mission already, he had already almost let Kori become a Ghoul.

By the time he reached a bathroom, he was blinking back tears of frustration ( _very_ unbecoming of a soldier of the Brotherhood of Steel, he berated himself) as he yanked open the medicine cabinets. Upon opening the third and final cabinet, an IV bag filled with dark, sluggish brown fluid plopped out and into the sink.

Radaway! Danse nearly laughed aloud in his elation as he snatched up the single package and darted back towards the direction he had left Kori.

“Kori!” he whispered harshly, announcing his presence just outside of the room to lower the chances of accidentally getting shot by the delirious woman. He turned the corner, and stopped just short of being shot in the face by a Raider straggler. He yanked his face back, swearing he saw the bullet fly past his field of vision in slow motion, before taking a hold of the weapon in his face. He knocked it back into the Raider’s nose, uncaring of the splatters of blood that dripped across his own uniform as a result. Once the enemy was stunned, he yanked the man back towards him, only to kick him in the stomach and send him sprawling across the floor. He then cocked the stolen gun, and shot a bullet straight through his head.

Danse panted once the ordeal had passed, shoulders heaving and adrenaline racing through him. He was interrupted by a long, low whistle.

“I was just about to have him,” Kori whispered hoarsely, and Danse rushed over and began to prepare the Radaway for injection. “And you just… well… you reminded me why I’m glad I decided not to become a Raider.”

“Well, don’t you forget it,” the Paladin grumbled. He held up the package and watched as the fluid within began to slide down the tube towards the needle. He gathered Kori in his lap, sitting back on the couch with her in his arms, before inserting the needle into her wrist. The vault dweller winced at the pain, before relief flooded her features as the medicine began to do its work, flushing out her system of radiation. Her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she released a sigh so slow and relaxed, Danse was almost afraid she was dying anyways.

“Shit,” Kori muttered, rolling her head into Danse’s arm. “That’s… wow.”

“You were doing that poorly, weren’t you?” he asked quietly, brushing some hair off of her forehead as the Radaway rested on his shoulder. “You wasted so much Radaway on me, you completely neglected yourself. Why would you do that?”

The vault dweller snorted. “Maxson wouldn’t actually give a shit if I died. It’s you he cares about… so I made a choice.”

Danse blinked. “Kor-- er, Knight… that’s… you’d risk your life just to spare me from a little pain?”

“Yeah,” Kori shrugged tiredly. “But only so Maxson doesn’t--”

“The reasoning doesn’t matter,” he cut her off, moving her so that she was sitting up a little more in his arms. “You’re still prioritizing my life over yours. While I understand your reasoning, it is my mission to protect you at all costs. If I were to lose my life out here, it would be protecting you. Not the other way around.”

“No, Danse--”

“ _Kori_ .” The word was snarled out, viciously so, not in a sense of ‘I will hurt you if you continue to talk.’ It was more like ‘Please stop this. Please don’t make me fight with you, because we both know we’re _both_ wrong.’

Danse shut his eyes, picking up the Radaway and resting it against the side of his head as the fluid continued to dribble into Kori’s veins. “Kori. Knight. Please. Our goal out here is to _protect_ each other, not _die_ for each other. I appreciate the help that you gave me, but to completely neglect yourself in the process… The only way-- the _best_ way-- you can protect me is if you _stay alive_ . And if that’s what you want to do, is protect me, then you _have_ to keep yourself intact. You can help me. You can give me ammunition, hell, you can even take blows for me. That’s fine.”

He opened his eyes, and stared down at her beggingly. “But please… don’t _die_ for me. I’m… I’m not worth that.”

Kori’s eyes snapped open, brow furrowed in anger, before they softened in realization. “... Augh… alright… but only if you promise me the same.”

“Fine then,” Danse agreed with a sigh. He scratched his temple with his knuckles, before dropping his hand to his side, resting his head against the back of the couch. “Fine then.”

“... fine then,” Kori mimicked a moment later, mumbled lazily in exhaustion.

The Paladin just gave a small chuckle, averting his gaze and leaning his head back, closing his eyes. A moment later, however, Kori spoke up.

"Is... is this why you agreed to my proposition?"

Danse cracked open an eye. "I'm sorry?"

"You said the other day you didn't want to be alone again. That you'd been alone for so long. Are you... Danse..."

"I've been without friendship or companionship of any sort for a long time," he confessed, feeling suddenly more vulnerable than the sick woman in his arms. Still, he continued to speak, hoping his words would perhaps emphasize the gravity of his emotions, and the need for Kori to stay alive. "I have my brothers and sisters, but there's no warmth. There's no friendship, really. You're the first I've had in a very long time. Physical contact has been even fewer and farther between, and when you first suggested that we sleep together... that neglected part of me perked up its head. A part of me knew somehow... you'd be able to give me what I'd been missing. And it was... a big leap for me. I've been without physical affection for so long of any sort, I almost wondered if I'd be able to handle it. It's... difficult for me to accept that I'm worthy of that sort of... interaction..."

Kori yawned against Danse's arm, and he risked a glance down at her. Her eyes were shut, and her breathing had evened out. She was fast asleep.

Danse chuckled a little at that, though he was a little disappointed, Kori likely hadn't heard his speech. Eventually, he, too, fell asleep, Radaway still held against his temple. Hopefully, when she woke up, she’d be able to hold down her food, and they could recover and head out once again.

 

* * *

 

“Are we almost to our destination, soldier?”

Kori stopped to look back at Danse, on an uphill slope on a broken road just on the edge of Concord, and gave him a small grin. Her cheeks were once again vibrant, though her head of hair still seemed a bit thin.

“Almost there,” she promised as he trudged behind. “Just over this hill. We’ll spend a day or two recovering, and then we’ll find a Courser, and save my son.”

Danse panted, arching his back slightly. It wasn’t a cool day, and he was sweating up a storm in his Power Armor. Kori wasn’t doing much better, but she was having a better attitude about it. Still, he was trained to work under far less favorable conditions; as a Brotherhood Paladin, he would persevere.

As the two of them reached the top of the hill, a Red Rocket truck stop came into view. From outside the building came a bark, and from around the corner ran a German Shepard. The dog was sprinting towards Kori, whimpering and yelping like mad. The woman knelt down, still too tall in her Power Armor, and extended her arms for the dog.

“Dogmeat!” she shouted, obviously excited to see him. Once owner and pet made contact, the animal got up on its hind legs and licked at her face furiously. “Awe, geeze, yeah, it’s me, I’m here. I’m okay.”

Danse tilted his head to one side as he watched the two, and then up to the truck stop. “So this is where you’ve been living?”

“Yeah, most of the time,” Kori replied, standing up with a grunt. She had to bang her knee in order to get it to straighten. “When I can’t stand going home, at least. That’s not too far from here, either, but… this is my new home, I guess. I’ve got a Power Armor repair station inside; you’re welcome to use it first. Come on, I’ll show you inside.”

She bid him to follow with a wave of her hand, and he did so. Upon closer inspection of the truck stop, he noticed that the windows were completely blocked and boarded up, and two of the doors didn’t belong to the original truck stop; they were post war, added likely when the originals were destroyed or stolen.

Kori lead him around the side of the truck stop, and pushed a button. The garage door began to raise then, which was a relief to Danse-- the truck stop had power. Inside, there was a Power Armor station, true to the vault dweller’s word… along with five or six empty Power Armor exoskeletons.

“Damn,” Danse laughed as he looked at them, “Do you have enough suits, Knight?”

“Hey, they’re backups,” Kori argued, but she was smiling as well as she gestured for Danse to enter. She herself exited her Power Armor, giving a groan of relief once her overheated body was out in the open once again. “Help yourself to whatever scrap I have to fix your armor-- oh, shit, not that!”

Danse had picked up a small wooden soldier toy, but it was taken from his hands abruptly, before he really had a chance to look at it. He blinked in surprise down at Kori, who moved the wooden toy to a stand in the corner of the room, which housed several Vault-Tec bobbleheads.

“Sorry, sorry,” she apologized, placing the item in its new home. “That was a gift from a friend. Not junk. Not ever junk.”

Once Kori was certain the soldier was secure, she turned back to Danse, who just raised an eyebrow at her, before turning and heading for the Power Armor station. “Maybe you should do a sweep of your junk to double check that there aren't things you’d rather keep.”

“No, no, we’re good now,” Kori stated as the Paladin exited his Power Armor. “We’re good. So most of the scrap is in that workbench behind the exoskeletons, and I’m sure there will be enough for you to repair your Power Armor. While you do that, I am going to make us some food. Deathclaw steak, or Radscorpion?”

“Radscorpion sounds excellent,” Danse replied, unzipping the front of his BOS suit slightly and working on rolling up his sleeves. He placed his hands on his hips, and surveyed his Power Armor with slight disdain. “It's going to take all day for me to get my armor back in acceptable condition,” he muttered to himself, looking around for a wrench. “Slow cooked Radscorpion is best, so please take your time, if you so choose. I have some rations to tide me over, and I’m fairly certain I’ll be here all day regardless.”

“Alrighty, four slow cooked steaks, coming up!” Kori threw off her shirt, leaving it haphazardly on the floor and now just in a pair of shorts and an undershirt. She disappeared around the corner a moment later, towards the cooking station Danse had spotted behind the truck stop earlier. He stared at the abandoned shirt for a long moment, before shaking his head and returning his attention to his suit. As much as he disapproved, this was Kori’s home, not under Brotherhood regulations. If she wanted to leave her clothes scattered around where they could be stepped on, or torn apart, or stolen, that was her choice.

A nose nudging his hand distracted him from undoing the first screw keeping his arm piece in place. Danse turned around, blinking down at the dog Kori had been greeted by earlier. What was his name… Dogmeat? Well regardless… Danse didn’t have much experience with dogs. He looked around, trying to see if maybe Kori was looking for the dog, but she was still out of sight.

“Uh… hey, boy,” he said hesitantly, patting the top of Dogmeat’s head. Dogmeat woofed quietly in approval, leaning into Danse’s touch. At the dog’s sign of approval, Danse scratched a little harder, and got happy panting in response. All too soon, Danse was pulling his hand away, causing the German Shepherd to whimper.

“Sorry, boy,” the Paladin said to him, lifting the wrench again. “I’ve got work to do.” Danse turned back around to his work, and Dogmeat settled down at the mouth of the garage, yawning and watching this newcomer with curious eyes.

He worked well into the evening; it was about six by the time Kori walked into the garage with two plates of Radscorpion steak, and some fresh ears of corn. Danse wiped off his hands with a rag, then his chest as well, having tied the top half of his uniform around his waist, and accepted the plate graciously. The two sat on the floor together, staring outside, where the sun was beginning to set.

“I hope it was slow enough,” Kori laughed. “Had to prepare it, and by the time I was done, I only had four hours to work with.”

“Four hours is plenty,” Danse assured her, taking a bite and letting his eyes slide shut in satisfaction. “... Mm. Oh yeah. Plenty.”

The vault dweller chuckled again, chewing slowly and thoughtfully as she stared out of the garage into the distance. Halfway through his own meal, Danse paused to address Kori’s silence.

“You’re thinking about our next course of action, aren’t you?”

She nodded, setting down her plate for a moment. “I’m thinking… if we’re going after an Institute Courser, and if they’re as dangerous as I’ve been lead to believe… I think we’re going to want help.”

“Of course,” Danse agreed. “I have a list of Brotherhood soldiers that I personally feel will be of best--”

“No, no, Danse,” Kori insisted, waving her arms and shaking her head. “No. Trust me, we want… I’ve got friends that I personally trust. Each one with a unique skillset that’s going to get us where we need to be. I know the Brotherhood can help, but… this is my mission. I want people _I_ know that I can trust. I… hope that doesn’t offend you. I’m sure the Brotherhood could do a fine job, but… this is the way I want to go about it.”

The Paladin offered a gentle smirk. “Don’t worry, Kori. I understand. This is your mission; you call the shots. Of course, I’ll still give you my own commands, but that’s just to keep you safe. I think we have the potential to be quite an effective team… _if_ you learn to cooperate. I’m willing to follow you wherever during your personal missions throughout the Commonwealth, but at the same time, you made some pretty foolish decisions out there in the Glowing Sea.”

He scratched his forearm nervously. “Honestly, I’m… I’m afraid to think about what may have become of you if I hadn’t been there by your side.”

“Oh? I didn’t think I mattered _that_ much to you,” Kori teased.

Her smile dropped when Danse turned to regard her with a more serious expression. He sighed, and tilted his head back, staring up at the ceiling.

“Kori, I think we may have gotten off on the wrong foot when we first met and I feel like I owe you an apology. Expecting you to embrace the standards of the Brotherhood without a history with us was… unfair. And given that you’ve adjusted so well to our beliefs, I don’t think I needed to push so hard.”

“That’s… very kind. Thank you.” She smiled, but she knew that he had more to say.

“Well, you deserve it,” Danse continued, just as she had predicted. He took another bite of his steak before continuing. “When I was an Initiate, my sponsor was Paladin Krieg. Toughest squad leader I ever served with. He was a model soldier, embodying the values every trainee was striving to achieve. Fiercely loyal, secure in his beliefs and brave to a fault. From the moment I was assigned to his squad I was singled out… it felt like he was pushing me harder than the rest of the team. I fought by his side for years, and we had some seriously close calls, but he never explained to me why I was treated that way.”

The vault dweller tilted her head to one side. “Did you ever _ask_ him why?”

“I’d considered it, but unfortunately, I never had the chance.” The Paladin sounded melancholy as he recollected this particular set of memories. “After I was promoted to Paladin and I had moved on to my own squad, I received word that Krieg was killed at Adams Air Force Base. The news was like being kicked in the stomach. I mean, I’d lost some of my brothers and sisters before, but his death… well, it really got to me. It’s taken me a long time to realize it, but the reason Krieg was so tough on me is the same reason I’m so tough on you. It’s because I believe in you, and I don’t want to see any of your potential go to waste.”

When Danse dared a glance over at Kori, he was shocked to find that she was looking at him in an almost awestruck way. The look quickly went away once she realized he was staring, but she still remained surprised. “I… don’t know what to say.”

“You don’t have to say anything,” he quickly supplied to ease her clear unease. Danse offered up a gentle smile, and a pat on her shoulder. “Just keep doing what you’re doing.”

Kori nodded, tilting her head and giving Danse a warm smile of her own. They remained staring at each other for a minute, before a strange twist in his gut made him break eye contact. “Well, I’ve said what I had to say, and I hope that it meant something to you. I… trust you’ll keep this in confidence, of course. Some of that information was of a personal nature, and, well, I’d like to keep it that way.”

“Of course,” she assured him, patting his shoulder herself. “What’s a secret among friends, right? Don’t worry; you’re safe to speak your mind around me.”

“The solidarity is greatly appreciated,” Danse beamed, having finally finished his steak and was moving on to the corn. Kori glanced behind them at his Power Armor.

“You almost finished with that?” she asked him, gesturing to it. “I’ve still got mine to do some tuning on. I mean, not that I’m going to wear it again any time soon, but I’d like to get a start on it so the next time I work on it, I won’t have as much to do.”

“Just need to tinker a bit with the hips, and then the station’s all yours,” Danse assured her, giving the leg a firm pat.

“Thanks. I could just take the suit over to Sanctuary over the hill that way, but I don’t feel like having Preston Garvey ride my ass about settlements for the fortieth time.” She rolled her eyes, and Danse laughed sympathetically; often, Kori ranted to Danse about how she ran all over the Commonwealth doing the Minutemen’s errands. She’d only agreed to be their General, because she knew no one else would.

Noble and selfless. Just like she always was.

“Well, with that being said, you can finish in the morning. Now,” Kori said, setting down her finished plate and stretching, “I think I need a long, hot shower. I spent _forever_ setting up a water heater, but… it only lasts for about five minutes before it starts getting cold. So I think we should shower together.”

Danse choked on a bite of corn, and Kori snorted.

“Hey, relax,” she urged him, “things don’t have to get sexual if you don’t want them to. Besides, I’m feeling pretty exhausted, honestly. It’d just be a shower. A very close shower, granted, probably a lot of skin to skin contact, but still just a shower.”

“Ah.” The Paladin calmed down a little at that, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Given the circumstances, and our… arrangement… I suppose that I have nothing against sharing your facilities with you.”

“Awesome.” She patted his knee and stood. “Wait right there; I’ll grab you a change of clothes, and then I’ll show you to it. It’s behind the truck stop, against the back wall, but I’ve got it locked up so people don’t come and steal my water.”

Danse nodded, watching Kori as she disappeared through a side door into the customer section of the Red Rocket, which he had yet to see inside of. He didn’t have to wait long for her to come back, with a complete set of clothes-- shirt, pants, underwear, shoes-- even socks. _Socks_. Danse smiled up at her, taking the bundle when it was handed to him, and Kori grabbed him by the wrist and pulled him to his feet, pulling him outside around back.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note at the end of the chapter this time! Give it a read, I promise it's actually important this time around!

To Danse’s credit, he managed  _ not  _ to get aroused until the very end of their shower together. It was through no direct fault of either of them-- it was simply a combination of finally feeling safe and relaxed, on top of the warm water, and a warm, smooth body in close quarters next to him. Even as his cheeks went pink, Kori just laughed it off, giving him a playful smack on the ass.

“Everyone gets accidental boners,” she said to him, scrubbing radioactive dust out of her hair. “Even girls. Now, whether you want to  _ do  _ something about that or not, that’s up to you. I’ll be more than happy to assist if you do.”

Danse said nothing in response, mostly because he was trying to mentally will the half-chub away. He thought of many things-- Deathclaws, Ghouls, super mutants, Ghouls and super mutants in dresses… luckily, it worked.

They dressed in comfortable silence; Danse found himself surprised at how good of a condition the clothes Kori had given him were. It felt a bit odd, to not be in his Brotherhood uniform, which was currently soaking in sudsy water with Kori’s things. Everything felt so loose. He felt almost naked without it. Very vulnerable.

The Paladin was pulled from his thoughts by Kori taking a hold of his wrist again, pulling him back into the house as dusk began to fall and night fell like a blanket. She pressed a button and began to close the garage, and he finally walked into the main part of the Red Rocket.

At the bar in front of the barred windows were several stools, of various mismatching sorts of shapes and heights, along with a few packages of pre-war food. At the far end of the counter, however, there was a weapons crate, with a few spilling out of the top. He almost tripped over a magazine rack, before realizing that there were  _ four _ , all filled with booklets of various sorts-- comic books, manuals, guides, and others. The jukebox actually caused him to stop and stare, before he was being tugged around the cashier counter.

Behind the counter was a large metal dresser, and above it cabinets with boxes of holotapes and notes, and at the far back part of the room, was a couch, a coffee table with some abandoned glasses, and a TV.

“You’ve been doing well for yourself on your own,” Danse marveled as he stared at the setup.

“Well,” she replied, opening the door to the bedroom, “it’s a comfort to have some semblance of pre-war life, even if it’s for a TV with no stations that broadcast to it.”

She gestured Danse into the bedroom, and he stepped in very cautiously. He observed the desk to his left, then the bed, dresser, and fan to his right. One thing he knew for certain, was that that bed was not made for two people. His neck felt hot at the implications of that, and Kori directing him in here.

“You can sleep with me,” she said, as he had expected… “or you can sleep out on the couch. The choice is yours, but I think you’d be more comfortable in here with me. On top of that, there are no Brotherhood soldiers here to tattle on us.”

Kori stepped around him so that she was in front of him, and stood close, hands on her hips and chin high as she looked up at the Paladin with a twinkle in her eye. He… he hadn’t seen that look on her face since he first agreed to sleep with her.

It meant she felt free. In control of not just the situation, but of herself.

That in itself was warm and comforting. He nodded, first to himself, and then to her. “Well… given that nights in the Commonwealth can be cold and unforgiving, I believe it could be tactically advantageous to share body heat.”

“I’m glad you agree.” She let go of his wrist, then, and patted his side. “Crawl in whenever you want, I’m getting in now. Almost dying from radiation poisoning takes a lot more out of you than I was anticipating. I’m pretty beat.”

Danse nodded, taking a seat at the chair in front of her bed and taking off his socks, but pausing at his shirt. Almost immediately, from behind him, Kori spoke up again. “Hey, if you want to take off your shirt, by all means. I sleep without pants.”

The Paladin froze up. Oh. Oh that was going to be interesting.

He did his best to brush the revelation off, throwing off the offending garment before standing and turning around. Sure enough, there Kori was, in nothing but an oversized T-shirt and her underwear. She leaned back against the dresser by her bed, taking a long, slow, thoughtful sip of water. Danse felt heat creep from his neck around to his shoulders as he stared at her exposed shoulder, the neck of the shirt being far too large on her just below average frame.

This was  _ definitely  _ going to be interesting.

The vault dweller set down her water carefully, before quirking an eyebrow at Danse. She nodded her head towards the bed. “You get settled in first,” she said.

“Actually,” Danse replied, “I think it would be better for you to be against the wall and I on the outside. Should anything happen to wander in, I’ll be able to ward them off. You won’t be first target.”

Kori just laughed at that, crawling into bed and shaking her head as she settled beneath the sheets. “Such a gentleman,” she mumbled, and the Paladin nervously moved in beside her. He remained laying on his back, while Kori huddled up against the wall, curled in on herself. She felt so… small next to him like this. Normally, in the bedroom, she was such an overpowering force, but now…

“Goodnight, Danse,” Kori yawned, hunkering down into the sheets, until just the top of her head was visible.

Danse blinked once over at her, before turning on his side, facing away. Maybe this wouldn’t be so difficult, after all. He couldn’t see her small frame in that oversized shirt anymore, she wasn’t actively coming on to him… yes. He could sleep like this. “Goodnight… uh… Kori.”

This was fine.

 

* * *

 

This was not fine. Why was she in his arms. Why was he spooning her. Why was he hard. Why did she smell so good. Why did his chest feel so tight. Why were his arms shaking. This was bad. This was not fine.

Danse closed his eyes, tried to pretend this wasn’t happening. He was sure Kori wouldn’t mind, but something about it was off-putting to him. He wasn’t certain, due to how flustered he was, but he was fairly certain it was related to the constricting feeling in his chest. He’d had a good night’s rest, uneventful and dreamless, but he’d just… woken up like this. With Kori in his arms, and this unnecessary pounding of his heart.

He wanted to get up. He wanted to separate from the situation, but he also didn’t want to wake up the vault dweller in his embrace. She was fast asleep. Snoring, even. Disturbing her would hurt him more than staying where he was, mind drowning in questions and emotions he couldn’t comprehend this early in the morning. Kori needed this rest, and he’d be damned before he interrupted it.

Danse breathed deeply. In, and out. He could remain calm about this. They both were simply victims of circumstance. Again, it was likely that Kori wouldn’t mind the situation, or at the very least, wouldn’t feel awkward or offended by it. Danse willed himself to relax, inch by inch. Things like this just happened, when two people shared a sleeping space. Yes, really, it couldn’t have been avoided. That thought was what soothed him the most. He was almost slipping back to sleep when…

When Kori pressed back against him, and mewled softly in her sleep.

Danse went tense again. ‘ _ God, why, why _ ,’ he cursed silently. There wasn’t really any room left for him to retreat. He was about falling off of the bed, and she was pressed right against him. He could feel sweat breaking out on his temple

Kori groaned, and shifted, and Danse grunted at the friction. He needed to get away,  _ now _ . Just when he was about to try to pull away from her, there was a hand around his left wrist, holding him close.

“Mmm, morning, Danse,” came the still half-asleep voice of the vault dweller.

Danse fell still. “M-Morning, Kori,” he replied, voice short and strained.

Kori stretched, which caused her to rub her ass against his now very prominent erection. When he sucked in a sharp breath, in response, she just laughed, the sound cracking and sticky, like roasted marshmallows. She hummed and turned around to face Danse, a lecherous smirk on her features. She looked him up and down, at the expression on his face, and chuckled.

“How do you feel about a morning round?”

Danse furrowed his brow. “When you refer to us having sex as ‘having a round,’ I can only relate it to some sort of fight.”

Kori snorted, before pushing Danse onto his back and resting her head on his chest. He had to let a foot fall out of the bed to rest on the floor to keep himself from tumbling out. “That’s not a clear yes or no, Paladin.”

After steadying himself, Danse pondered. “Well… I suppose it depends on what it would entail...”

Kori screwed up her brow and hummed in thought, before shrugging. “Honestly, I just want you to press me down into the mattress and grind down into me nice and hard. Maybe whisper some filthy things into my ear while you’re at it, but, given that you’re still new to all of this, I get it if you don’t know if you can.”

Danse gulped. “That… does sound desireable.” His expression lightened as something crossed his mind. “In fact, there  _ is  _ something I’ve always wanted to attempt on a sexual partner. When I got one, of course. Will you move on your stomach for me? Oh, and remove your shirt, please.”

Kori did as he requested, scooting towards the middle of the bed, pulling a pillow to rest under her head, before throwing off her shirt onto the floor somewhere else in the room. Danse sat up, pulling the covers off of the both of them. He bit his lip at the sight of the vault dweller in nothing but her panties, running a hand down her back.

“Uh, do you have… some sort of skin safe oil, or lotion?”

Kori understood what he was trying to get at, and hummed in interest. “In the bottom drawer of the dresser. I’ve got some warming oil for tense muscles. Not safe for lube use, but if you want to do what I think you want to do…”

“Well, you  _ have  _ been working hard,” the Paladin stated, as he rummaged around in the drawer. There were… several interesting items in there he took note of to ask about later. Next time they were here. He found the massage oil, and returned to the bed with it, settling again between Kori’s legs. “I think you deserve some sort of reward. After all, as your sponsor, I have to be certain that you’re in prime shape. The best way to do that is hands on inspection. And, given that Knight-Captain Cade isn’t present to put his chiropractic knowledge to use, I suppose I’ll just have to suffice for now.”

The vault dweller laughed as Danse spread the oil on his hands. “I love it when you get creative with our positions like that. Of  _ course  _ you gotta look out for me, isn’t that right, Paladin?”

“Affirmative.” Danse smirked, and placed his palms flat on Kori’s back. “True brotherhood.”

He got to work before Kori could speak again, and he was immediately proud at the moan she let out. Her fingers flexed at the pillow beneath her head, clenching repeatedly as Danse worked into sore, tight muscles.

“Higher,” she winced, hissing through her teeth. “Above my shoulder blades.”

The Paladin did as he was requested, knuckles rolling hard into stiff shoulders. Her responding moan was near pornographic, and his movements stuttered for a moment at the sound of it.

“Hey,” Kori teased, breath shaking, “it’s my house. I can get loud if I want. Keep going.”

Danse gulped, and then nodded. “Of course,” he said, and did just that.

By the time he had reached her glutes, it was obvious the both of them were turned way the hell on; Danse was straining in his underwear, and Kori was soaking through hers (much to Danse’s delight-- that was a  _ delicious  _ sight). He had just barely begun to work out the knots there, before Kori was sliding back, getting to her knees to press against Danse. He stopped touching her then, abruptly moving his hands to hold at her waist.

“Open me up,” she crooned, reaching back and taking a hold of one of Danse’s hands. She moved both of their hands to her underwear, pulling back the fabric to reveal the hot, wet pink center hidden beneath. “Leave the underwear on.”

Danse sighed hotly, wiping off his hands before holding the fabric aside with one hand while he thrusted two fingers inside, knowing she’d be plenty slick and loose enough for it. “Touching you like this,” he breathed, almost reverently, “never fails to drive me crazy with arousal. Thinking about getting to… to fuck this tight heat… it’s almost too much sometimes.”

He pushed her down flat on the bed, and Kori allowed him to do so, clenching around his fingers with the motion. Once she was relaxed again, he worked in a third, curling and thrusting in and out.

“Fuck, yes,” she sighed, spreading her legs a little wider. Her breath trembled when his fingers began brushing over a sensitive bundle inside of her, and she had to close her eyes at the onslaught of pleasure. “Danse… Danse, come on, I’m ready… I’m ready for your cock.”

The Paladin withdrew his fingers, pulling down his underwear just enough to get at his throbbing length. He gave it a few good strokes, before positioning himself at her entrance as requested. “Okay,” he breathed, before pushing inside in one smooth, shallow thrust, halfway to the hilt. The two of them groaned in unison, Danse letting go of her panties and placing his hands at either side of Kori’s torso to support himself.

“Yeah, c’mon,” the vault dweller urged him, trying in vain to thrust back with the limited movement her position granted her. Thankfully, Danse caught on to the memo, and gave her what she had asked for earlier. He kept his thrusts shallow, remaining deep and simply grinding inside. The pleased whine that resulted from his movements made Danse shudder, and increase his speed and strength. “Fuck, yes, I’ve needed this.”

“F-fuck, Kori,” Danse panted, watching his cock disappear in and out of that tight heat. One hand came to grasp a cheek tightly, before smacking it and returning to supporting himself. “Fucking-- fucking amazing--”

“Yeah, come on, soldier,” she commanded, laughing lightly as his pace faltered for a brief moment. “Make me cum like this, on just the barest movement of your dick.”

He was determined to do as she asked; Danse doubled his efforts to hit Kori in all of the right spots, taking her increased moaning or surprised gasps as signs of success towards his goal. The Paladin sank lower, and lower, until he was nearly laying on top of her, planking and supporting his weight on his elbows rather than his hands. He was shaking, breath coming out in quick huffs.

“Is it good?” Kori asked teasingly, smiling a little as she felt his breath at the base of her neck. “You like getting your dick in this tight cunt?”

Danse made a desperate, choked nose, thrusting harder still. Kori laughed in response, resting her head on the pillows and sighing in contentment. “Yeah you do. So good to me… fuck me harder.”

Danse took a deep breath, and obeyed, grinding deeper, harder, swiveling his hips more and stimulating the woman beneath him  _ just right _ . She moaned, loudly.

“Yes, fuck,  _ perfect _ ,” Kori cried out, hands fisting in the pillows, “keep doing that,  _ please _ \--”

She didn’t have to ask twice. The moment the command was uttered, Danse repeated the same motion again, and again, drinking in each raise in pitch in her voice like fine wine. She buried her head into the pillows beneath her when she was close, and Danse, in a moment even he didn’t fully process, reached out to pull her head back by her hair.

“Don’t hold back,” he growled, nearly right against the shell of Kori’s ear. “Don’t. Cum for me. Let me hear you.”

And she did, not a minute later, crying out as she clenched down around the thick length inside of her. Danse’s own movements stuttered, and he pulled out, thick ropes of white splashing over her thighs and her underwear. He watched, enraptured, as he ruined the fabric, and watched as her empty cunt pulsed and throbbed around nothing. Danse groaned, and shut his eyes, biting his lip as the warmth of afterglow washed over him quickly.

A minute later, Kori sat up, chuckling as she scratched under Danse’s chin to bring him back to the present. “Thanks for that,” she said, kissing under his jaw before standing and stretching. “You can have another shower if you want after that; I’m going to get dressed, hang up our clothes to dry, put together some breakfast, and then we’ll head out and grab my guys for the Courser mission.”

Danse had to shake his head a bit; it astonished him, how quickly Kori could recompose herself, when he still felt like he was weightless. “Right. Understood. I think I’ll be fine; I’ll help with breakfast, if you’ll let me.”

“Absolutely,” Kori replied, finding a good pair of pants and slipping into them. She tossed Danse his pants as well. “Come on out-- I’ll give you your options.”

With that, the vault dweller left, and after buckling his pants, Danse followed close behind.

 

* * *

 

“First stop,” Kori grunted, as the two came up to the Starlight Drive-in. Danse raised a brow in surprise upon finding a bustling community in the old outdoor movie theater; several ramshackle houses had been erected, including a few that were obviously shops of some sort. “Sorry about the mess,” the vault dweller continued. “Taught them how to build but no one really thought about making it  _ orderly _ .”

“This is one of your settlements?” Danse inquired, stopping short as a man who hadn’t been looking where he’d been going nearly ran into the Power Armor clad Paladin.

“Yeah, one of too many,” she laughed a bit bitterly, heading towards the only remaining pre-war building. There, there was a bar, with several settlers seated at it. Two were closer together than others, continually elbowing the other. “Gimme a sec while I get these asshole’s attention.”

As Kori and Danse approached, he took a moment to observe the two men Kori had pointed to. One had on a duster, and had a dark green hat with two live bullets held to it by a sweatband. He had several bands of ammunition strapped to his legs. The other appeared to be just an ordinary drifter-- plaid shirt and jeans, but he was bald, and wore a dark pair of sunglasses. The two men were in deep conversation, not yet aware of the vault dweller’s presence.

“--so, so I say to the guy, ‘Listen buddy, the only Fat Man that’s getting launched around here is gonna be you if you keep yapping.’ Of course the old geezer doesn’t believe me, so he’s already loading his gun, but when it comes down to a sniper and a mini-nuke, the clear winner isn’t who’s got the bigger gun… but who can load faster.” The man in the duster coat kicked back in his seat, hands behind his head and snickering at his drifter companion.

“For once, MacCready, I can actually give an ‘amen’ to that,” the bald one chuckled, clapping ‘MacCready’ on the back. “It actually reminds me of the time when I replaced a Gunner’s entire bullet stash with--”

Kori snuck up behind the both of them, and looped both of her arms around their necks, yanking them in for a surprise hug. “Save it for later, Deacon,” she laughed as the two of them struggled, pounding on her arms in frustration. “Whisper’s back. And she’s calling in a favor.”

She released the two men, who both gasped for breath and rubbed their necks. “There you are! Thought you almost forgot about me. But what, you’re gonna pick baldy over me?” MacCready complained. “You hired  _ me _ , boss.”

“Indeed I did,” Kori agreed, placing her hands on her hips. She stole Deacon’s drink and took a sip of it. “Indeed I did.”

“Listen, wherever Whisper’s going, it’s obvious it requires a bit more…  _ finesse _ .” Deacon accented the word with a long, drawn out hiss of the S’s. “A more stealthy touch. Don’t take it personally; it’s just obvious I’m better. So, you want me back on deck, huh? I gotta admit, things have been pretty quiet without you.””

“Well, actually,” Kori cut in, before she could be interrupted again, “I’m recruiting  _ both  _ of you.”

“Wait, what--”

“I  _ knew  _ you couldn’t live without me!” MacCready exclaimed, and he jumped out of his chair like an excited kid. It caused Danse to take a surprised step back, which finally drew attention to him. All three of them turned to look at Danse. MacCready regarded the BOS Paladin with frightened surprise, while Deacon looked ready to draw a weapon and start firing immediately. Only Kori’s hand on his shoulder seemed to be keeping him grounded.

They all stared at one another awkwardly for a moment, before Danse raised a hand, and waved tentatively. “... greetings.”

MacCready didn’t take his eyes off of Danse, but he did lean towards Kori, picking up his cup of coffee for a long, slow sip. “So, uh, who’s uh, who’s your friend here, boss?”

Danse should have thought of this; the people of the Commonwealth primarily regarded the Brotherhood in a negative light. They were viewed as warmongers here, not protectors of peace. He cursed himself for the mental slip, and chastised himself further for not insisting on a Brotherhood team for the mission rather than Kori’s choice.

But Kori just beamed, and patted Deacon’s shoulder. The other man didn’t relax. “This is Paladin Danse. And whether you like it or not, he’s going to be assisting us on the mission I have for us. It’s a biggy.”

Deacon furrowed his brow. “What exactly…  _ are  _ we doing then?”

“We’re taking down an Institute Courser.”

Deacon merely arched an eyebrow. MacCready, on the other hand, inhaled his hot beverage, and was coughing out his guts in response to the new information. He doubled over, and Danse watched him with an arched eyebrow of his own, before regarding Deacon once again. His defensiveness towards the Paladin was interesting, to say the least. He took mental note to assess it later. “If it’s any consolation, Deacon, I’m not here on Brotherhood business. All I’m here to help with is killing this Courser. I represent the Brotherhood of Steel, but the only order I’m carrying out is to protect Knight Farnsworth.”

Kori’s eyes widened, before she cringed at Danse for using her full title. Deacon merely smirked, turning to stare Kori down.

“Wooowww.  _ Knight _ Farnsworth! You’ve certainly been busy, haven’t you?”

“ _ I’ll explain later _ ,” Kori hissed, just barely loud enough for Danse to hear. She kept her plastic smile as she continued to speak, this time for all of them to hear. “Listen, you both have skills that I could really use when we track this thing down.”

“You-- hrk-- you know how to find Institute Coursers?” MacCready coughed, finally in control of himself enough to speak again. “How the  _ heck  _ did you learn that? More importantly…  _ why!? _ ”

“To find Shaun,” she replied simply.

Both Deacon and MacCready went rigid after that. It was obvious to Danse that she had told them  _ both  _ about her son. Deacon was the first to speak after a momentary silence.

“So… he really  _ is  _ in the Institute then?”

“I’m 100% positive,” Kori sighed. “Danse helped me get through the Glowing Sea in one piece, where a runaway Institute scientist is hiding out. He’s going to help me get inside. To do that, we need a Courser chip.”

“Gosh, Kori,” the sniper sighed, shaking his head back and forth rapidly. “I still don’t know about this. None of us have  _ any  _ idea what to expect--”

“If it was Duncan in there,” Kori replied, “you’d go rushing in head first, too. But it’s not Duncan, and you don’t have to come. I just… I just need your help is all I need. Both of you. Right now, it’s about helping me out. Not about who’s going to be in the group, or how we feel about each other. Not about even  _ how  _ I’m going to get in, because I don’t know that for sure yet. Okay? We’re going to work as a  _ team _ .”

Deacon and Mac exchanged glances, before glancing at Danse together. Deacon sighed, and shook his head, leaning back against his stool. “Only reason I’m playing along with this with that hulking hunk of metal in the group, is because of everything you’ve done for me and my friends. I owe you, and if this is how I do it… I’ll suck it up.”

Danse narrowed his eyes at Deacon. “Alright then. We do this quick, and you won’t have to worry about me. My sole duty is to protect the Commonwealth, but if that makes you nervous, I won’t remain long.”

“So, can you tell that to the rest of your big shiny blimp? Make everyone go home?”

“Deacon, play nice,” Kori growled, slugging him lightly. She rolled her shoulders back, and checked her Pip-Boy. “Alright, next stop, Cait.”

“Cait?” Danse frowned, and folded his arms. “I thought you said she was unfit for service.”

“White lie,” Kori huffed, still staring at her Pip-Boy. “She  _ was _ . Just… not when I told Maxson about her. She’s fine now; cured of all her addictions long before we even had that conversation. Trust me, we want her on the team.”

“Well, lead the way, boss,” MacCready insisted, smirking as he clapped her on the back and began leading her out of Starlight Drive-in and away from Danse. The Paladin frowned, but just as he was about to head after, he was stopped by Deacon standing in front of him.

“Listen,” the man growled, “I don’t know what kind of BOS missionary bullshit you’re trying to pull here, but if I find out you’re converting Kori to your fucked up train of thought--”

“I would advise  _ against  _ trying to start conflict with me, Deacon,” Danse growled in turn, clenching his robotic fists. “All I’m here to do is make sure Kori stays alive, and to act out on Brotherhood tenants, as per the Codex.”

“That’s the problem. So keep your distance from her,” Deacon snarled, before turning around and hurrying to catch up with Kori.

Danse stood still, blinking for a moment, before shaking his head and rushing to do the same. ‘ _ Kori… who are these people you’re associating yourself with? _ ’

 

* * *

 

“Ah,  The Combat Zone. Used to be wannabe gladiators bashed each other’s skulls in here. Now it’s just raiders, so… no change.”

Mac snorted at Deacon’s description of the Combat Arena and its past. “Sounds about right. I’m kinda ashamed to admit it, but I came here once for one of Cait’s fights when I was a Gunner. I really should have done something, but… man, she sure put on one hell-- er, heck of a killer show.”

“Well, she puts on better shows now as a friend than she ever did as some girl locked in a cage,” Kori supplemented opening the door inside. The four of them treaded lightly, and slowed even further upon hearing a low, mournful voice from within. Kori came to stand still, and closed her eyes. “Son of a gun… I haven’t heard her sing since I got her off the chems.”

Danse, too, stopped to listen, and was surprised at how Cait’s voice had such a powerful effect on him. He looked down when there was a pat on his Power Armor arm, MacCready smiling a little. His eyes looked a little damp.

“Yeah…  _ Way Back Home  _ is a good one. And she sings it  _ damn _ well.”

Danse nodded, suddenly afraid to speak. He felt the need to wipe at his eyes, but the task was impossible with metal hands.

Kori picked up an abandoned bat on her way in, dragging it along the floor a ways before beginning to swing it. As the four of them descended into the theater, Cait eventually came into view, short red hair in a tussle around her shoulders as she sang to herself, leaning back against a rickety pillar. Kori knocked the bat she’d gotten a hold of noisily against the floor, and the other woman only opened one eye in minor agitation. Upon realizing who it was, her smile softened, and she cocked her hips to one side.

“Well well well now, what do we got here?” Cait eyed Kori, and then the group behind her. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of Danse and Deacon, and Deacon folded his arms and puffed out his chest. Cait primarily focused on Danse.

“And who the hell is this then?” she asked Kori, leaning back against the pillar behind her once again and gesturing to the armor-clad man.

“Cait, Danse. Danse, Cait.”

Danse cleared his throat, trying his best to appear non-threatening. “You… you have a very lovely voice, Cait.”

“Thanks.” Cait sounded unimpressed, and she turned to Kori. “So where’d you pick up the goddamn zealot?”

“Cait, come on,” Kori balked, frowning. “Be nice. He’s here helping  _ me _ , not the Brotherhood. Right now, he’s just some guy in a suit of Power Armor. That’s all you need to focus on.”

“A bit of a challenge to do that when he’s wearin’ his heart on his sleeve.” She waved a hand toward the Brotherhood logo on Danse’s chest disgustedly. “How the hell did ya get him to play nice with Deacon for this long?”

Kori grabbed Cait’s arm roughly, and whispered something into her ear that none of them could hear. Cait’s eyes widened in realization, and she, too, whispered harshly to Kori, gesturing wildly towards both Deacon and Danse. The three men all exchanged nervous glances, before the two women finally stopped hissing at each other like cats defending their territory. Kori cleared her throat and straightened her clothes out, and Cait returned to folding her arms and rolling her eyes.

“Okay. So that’s it then. We got five out of six.”

Danse quirked a brow at her. She really wanted to recruit  _ another  _ companion? Five would probably be plenty against one person. Then again… it  _ was  _ a Courser. Maybe she had the right idea: better safe than sorry. Still, Danse sincerely hoped that whoever this sixth and final member of the group was, they would be slightly more hospitable towards him. Brotherhood or not, all he wanted to do was help in this endeavor. He wasn’t a threat towards  _ any  _ of them. “Who is the last companion?” he asked at length as the vault dweller tapped on her Pip-Boy.

Kori looked among her other companions, before offering them all a shaky smile.

“Nobody panic… but we’re grabbing Nick.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I'm just making the announcement now so nobody freaks out later, but I have decided to add another ship to this fic! Well, two, to be specific, but the big one is going to be Danse/Nick.
> 
> If you're not for that, that's totally okay, and I understand, but it won't come in for like... fifteen chapters, and the primary ship will still be Danse/SS. Nick is just going to play a very important part in Danse's shift from BOS zealot to Synth reborn and with the way they're being written, there's totally chemistry between them that I just can't ignore. Plus, this also opens the pathway for Nick/SS as well, so for you Nick lovers out there, it's kind of a win? Eh?
> 
> (plus I just really like the idea of "Synth who wasn't originally a Synth but came to terms with it over the course of 100 years" mentoring "Synth who didn't know he was a Synth and is having an existential crisis about his identity and just needs help.")
> 
> Anyhoo! I hope you enjoyed this chapter, please leave a comment if you did! It really means a lot <3


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Early update! Woo! I usually try to wait between 3 to 6 days to upload another chapter, just so I have plenty of time to write more, but progress is coming along _way_ quicker than anticipated, so here you go! In comes Valentine!

Upon entering Diamond City, Deacon scoffed once the foul air hit him. “Diamond city… Watch what you say. If the Institute chose one place to infiltrate… we’re walking right into it.”

Cait and MacCready both rolled their eyes then, but Kori just smirked and patted Deacon’s back consolingly. “Well, we won’t talk about anything until we get to Nick then.”

“ _ Especially  _ Nick’s office,” Deacon replied, frowning, but it was one of those over-exaggerated ones for when you knew someone was likely joking. “We can’t talk about anything there ever.”

“What, are we supposed to learn sign language on the walk there?” Cait demanded to know, jabbing a finger into Deacon’s arm. “Calm down there, ya damn spook. We’ll be in and out. No Institute bastard’s gonna kick us in the teeth now.”

The group began to descend down the stairs, but before Kori could get far, MacCready took a rough hold of her arm.

“Kori, listen,” MacCready whispered to her, all while jabbing a thumb Danse’s direction, who was oblivious as he looked around Diamond City for the first time. “Are you  _ sure  _ this is a good idea? We’re putting a lion in a room with a wounded meerkat here. If you’re serious about this, you need to actually tell him who--  _ what  _ we’re about to meet.”

Kori pursed her lips, and put her hands on her hips. “Hell, you’re right. You’re right. Look, you, Deacon, and Cait lead the way. I’ll talk with him about it on the way, alright?”

Mac nodded, and tagged Deacon and Cait to follow him along. Kori and Danse took up the rear, but before Kori could speak, Danse did so first.

“This Nick Valentine… he’s the detective that helped you figure out Virgil’s location, correct?”

“Uh, yeah, same guy,” Kori smiled nervously.

Danse didn’t catch on to her discomfort, and merely hummed in acknowledgement as they passed the noodle shop in the center of town. “Well, hopefully, he’ll be a more agreeable member of the group, in that case. After all, a noble man such as that should be reasonable towards someone with my ideology, even if he doesn’t agree with it.”

“Well, see… fuck, listen, about that…” Kori scratched her head and looked away anxiously. “Nick… Nick isn’t a… man…”

The Paladin’s steps faltered, but only for a moment. “Soldier,” he said, his voice suddenly cold, and stern, “if you expect me to walk into that detective agency with you, you had better elaborate, fast.”

Kori closed her eyes. “Listen. Nick is a prototype Gen-3 Synth-- and  _ don’t  _ say  _ anything  _ until I’m done. Nick is a prototype Gen-3; he has the body of a 2, but had someone’s pre-war memories uploaded into his databanks. Before you yank out your laser rifle for the ‘good of humanity and for the Brotherhood,’ I need you to take a deep breath, and realize that we wouldn’t have gotten this far without his help. I wouldn’t be this close to finding my son,  _ or  _ a way into the Institute.”

“Kori, if he’s a Synth, how do you know that this isn’t all part of some plan? How do you know that this isn’t some sort of trap?” Danse hissed down at her, and a Diamond City guard glared at both of them as he passed them by.

“Don’t you think I’d be captured or dead by now if Nick really was a part of all this? Or better yet, don’t you think  _ Nick  _ would already be dead? The Institute has ways of taking and killing people, and chances are, they aren’t even aware I exist if they haven’t done it yet. Nick was thrown away, anyways, as far as we know. Just… trust me. It’s better if you see him. He may be a free-thinking machine, but you’ll take one look at him, and realize that there’s no  _ way  _ he’s Institute related.”

By now, the group was turning in to the small alleyway that lead to Nick’s door. The other three looked back to Kori and Danse anxiously, before Cait approached the door and knocked.

“Knight,” Danse sighed through his nose, brows furrowed, “if he so much as lifts his gun the wrong way, I  _ will  _ blow his head off. Understood?”

“You blow his head off, and I leave the Brotherhood.”

Danse reeled back momentarily, shocked and offended, before leaning back in close and hissing, “You’ll be leaving the Brotherhood  _ anyways  _ if  _ he  _ blows  _ your  _ head off.”

“Nick would sooner pull out his own wires than hurt me.”

The door swung open.

“I damn well think he should.”

“... well that’s an awfully kind ‘how do you do’.”

Kori and Danse glanced up at the same time at the sound of the rattling, grating voice. Deacon, Cait, and MacCready all shared some variation of a humiliated or embarrassed expression as Nick Valentine emerged from his office, a cigarette in his metal hand and a quirked, non-existent eyebrow. Golden glowing eyes flickered between Danse and Kori rapidly, drinking in the sight of his favorite human bickering with a Power Armor clad BOS Paladin like she  _ owned  _ him. His human hand reached up to tilt back his fedora a bit to get a better look at the new face, before scratching into the hole in his neck. Danse gaped at the Synth in utter and absolute abhorrence. As much as he completely and utterly  _ loathed  _ the idea of Nick’s very existence… it was likely that Kori was right. A Synth this run down couldn’t  _ possibly  _ have many ties left to the Institute, even if he hated to admit it to himself.

“Kori, you wanna explain to me what this is about? I respect you, but uh, having a BOS soldier on my front porch is a little unnerving.” Nick’s eyes didn’t leave Danse, memorizing every detail of the other man.

“I know, and I’m sorry,” Kori replied, standing away from Danse and straightening herself out. “I’ll make it brief; I know how to find Shaun, but that requires killing an Institute Courser. I’m gathering my closest friends and allies for the job. This has nothing to do with factions, or picking sides, or making you all like one another-- you’re all just the people I trust to have my back out there.”

Nick took a long, slow drag of his cigarette (though how he could with no respiratory system, Danse had no clue), and leaned back against the wall. “Listen, I’m all for working with MacCready and Cait. Deacon, he’s kind of in my grey area. But… where in the hell did you pick up a Brotherhood of Steel  _ Paladin _ ?”

“Listen,” Kori sighed, “Danse is my friend. He’s a good man. Maybe we don’t all agree for the cause he fights for, but he’ll work with us.  _ Right _ , Danse?”

A vein was nearly popping out of his head as he stared at Nick. Nick just looked… bored. Curious and bored. He didn’t seem threatened by Danse at all. The Paladin glanced from him, to Kori, back to Nick, then back to the vault dweller. Literally  _ everyone  _ in this party was against him, for varying reasons of their own… and he was beginning to wonder if that included Kori. If she was true to the Brotherhood cause like she claimed she was,  _ why  _ in the world would she put him through this? Why, in her right mind, would she make him work together… with a  _ Synth _ ?

“You… you seriously are going to make all of us work… together. Have you lost your mind, Knight?” he growled.

“Oooh,  _ Knight _ !” Nick exclaimed, dropping his cigarette and stamping it out as Kori cringed at the title again. “Now  _ there’s _ a title I was hoping to never hear associated with you, Kori. I bet there’s one  _ hell  _ of an interesting story behind that. I know we saw that blimp fly in together after blowing Kellog’s brains out, but I was really sort of hoping you had more of a tolerance to shiny things.”

“I’m sorry Nick,” Kori cringed, “but I had ties to the Brotherhood even before the Prydwen flew in to the Commonwealth. Look, can we talk about this later?” She turned around to the Paladin. “Danse, please, Nick is a brilliant hacker, Deacon is an excellent strategist, Cait’s a great melee fighter, and MacCready is an amazing sniper. You’re our tank. Whether we like each other or not, each of you has a skill that we’re  _ desperately  _ going to need out there in order to kill this Courser as efficiently as possible.”

“Maybe not so loud there, Whisper?” Deacon said, his own voice just barely audible.

“Deacon, relax for just a moment,” the vault dweller begged.

Cait scoffed. “No offense there, Kori, but I’m thinking  _ you’re  _ the one that needs to take a breather. Is it really not reasonable for us to doubt this trigger happy fanatic? I can barely stand Deacon as it is, now you’re pairing us all up, with our backgrounds, with this asshole?”

“Now, hold on Cait, this is a good opportunity for you--”

“I can assure you,” Danse butt in, “that I am well in control of my weapon, and there should be no misfiring while out on the field--”

MacCready made finger-guns in Danse’s direction. “Ah! That’s what she said!”

Nick gave the sniper a withering look, before Mac continued.

“No, but seriously? I don’t feel good about having Nick and Danse in the same group here--”

“Guys, for fuck’s sake, this is not about Danse!” Kori shouted, stomping her foot on the ground. “God, can you leave him alone until you actually  _ know  _ him? There’s a  _ reason  _ he’s here with us, damn it!  _ I trust him! _ ”

The group fell silent. They all glanced between one another anxiously, uncertain what to say or do in response. Kori sighed, and stepped between all of them.

“Listen, I get why you all have your doubts, Nick and Deacon especially. I’m just asking, while Danse is with me, to just… just  _ play nice _ . He’s not here for the Brotherhood. He’s here for me. And if I tell him not to shoot someone, he better damn well listen, because chances are, I’ve got a fucking good reason.”

“Knight, I think you’re forgetting your place--”

The vault dweller spun back around, and pointed a finger into Danse’s nose. Her eyes held a cold determination that he had never seen before and, quite frankly, was frightened of now. “Unless we’re out on Brotherhood orders, you listen to  _ me _ out here. These are  _ my  _ missions, and sponsor or not, you’re not the leader of them. Nick is a friend. Deacon is a friend. The people that are under  _ my  _ protection do  _ not  _ get shot, or attacked, just because of your rules. Maxson doesn’t have to know, Haylen doesn’t have to know, so long as you’re out here with  _ me  _ and  _ my  _ friends, they’re  _ your friends too. Am I clear? _ ”

Danse steeled his nerves, glaring down at Kori with dark thunder rolling through his gaze. He couldn’t believe that she just stood him up in front of her allies the way that she did. He batted her hand away with a low snarl. “... for now, I’ll cooperate. But as Paladin and Knight, we are going to have a very,  _ very  _ long discussion about this later.”

“Ppfff. Good luck with that.” MacCready snorted, but he shrunk away when both Kori  _ and  _ Danse glared his direction.

Nick shook his head, shoving his thumbs into the loops of his trenchcoat. “Just so long as everyone stays under control and sticks to their roles, I’m sure we can make this work. Don’t worry, Danse; I promise my self-destruct feature won’t enable itself conveniently while I’m standing next to you.”

The Paladin made a noise of disgust as Nick winked at him, and shook his head. Kori sighed, and patted his arm consolingly. “Come on, Nick, make this easy for the big guy. Be amicable. Look, we’ll make this quick, alright? Work together, and things will go smoother. This is an Institute Courser we’re talking about; none of us really knows what we’re going up against so  _ please _ , let’s make this go smoothly. Listen to each other, and it’ll be over faster. Okay?”

Each member of the group nodded reluctantly, and Kori lead the way away from the Valentine Detective agency.

 

* * *

 

“Are you here for the Synth?” The Courser, a tall pale man with slicked back black hair and a black leather coat to match, asked Kori as she approached him, pistol down at her side. Danse and MacCready darted around the corner just as the two came nearly face to face.

“That’s  _ not  _ why I’m here,” Kori informed him, voice level and firm as she circled around him. The Courser remained unfazed, but he followed her every movement like a hawk.

Kori had followed the radio signal, just as Virgil had instructed, and even while her companions bickered amongst themselves along the way, they kept their hands to themselves, for the most part. It really was a relief. Upon arrival to the building where the Courser was holed up, the group was startled to find that the building it had entered was inhabited. The ground was littered with corpses of Gunners, and alarms were blaring as their leader barked commands over the intercom system. The six of them had raced up the building, fighting off the remaining Gunners along the way, in a race against time before the Courser completed its task… which was now made clear to them as Kori faced off with the powerful Synth.

“If you’re not here for the Synth,” he stated, “then you’re here for me. What do you want?”

Danse wanted to vomit at the sight of the Courser. He looked… pristine. Like some sort of priest, or missionary, with word from a maniacal god with no remorse. And the way he spoke, even, was far worse than any other Gen-3 Synth. Unlike those, this one actually sounded like he  _ was  _ a mechanical being. His words were slow, carefully measured and thought out.

Kori held her head high. “We’re on a need-to-know basis here. And you don’t need to know.”

The Courser merely shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’ll die like the rest of them.”

Kori ducked out of the way the moment the Courser opened fire, and MacCready yelped as he ducked to avoid the oncoming bullet. Danse, on the other hand, was not fazed. Just as he was about to charge out, however, a scream from behind him threw him off. Cait bolted towards the Courser, wielding a Power Fist, and slammed the weapon into the Synth’s jaw just as he turned to investigate the commotion. His head jolted roughly to one side, and there was a snapping sound… but his body remained motionless. He turned back towards Cait, re-correcting the alignment of his jaw, before punching her square in the stomach. Danse and MacCready looked on in horror as the Irish girl went flying, crashing into the wall and falling in a crumple.

Kori saw this as well, and shouted obscenities at the Courser before firing a clip of bullets into him. The rounds exploded on impact, but the Synth barely stumbled. He raised his Institute pistol her way, and fired himself, a bullet or two grazing her side as she darted around the center of the room.

“Shoot, darn, son of a hound dog,” MaCcready cursed as he fumbled to load his sniper rifle. He looked up at Danse, and gestured out with a quick, frantic nod of his head. “Well, what are you waiting for, they’re getting their butts kicked out there! Go! Go go go!”

Danse nodded curtly. “Let’s send him back to hell!” he shouted, charging out from around the corner. He did a double take as he noticed an old Gen-2 Synth in a fedora running by his side, but he made no comment. If an old rickety machine like him wanted to put himself at risk at the hands of one of the Institute’s most powerful weapons, then so be it. It wasn’t Danse’s problem.

While Danse stopped at a reasonably safe distance to open fire, Nick ran a little further before stopping and whipping out his pistol. “You really want this to be the last mug you see!?” He barked out, shooting into the Courser’s head, shoulder, neck, and heart.

At the shot to the throat, the Courser choked, holding a hand to his neck, before shaking his vision of any blur and taking aim at Nick. Danse’s eyes widened, and before he could process his actions, he took a single step in front of Nick, taking the shots intended for the old Synth. When the Courser stopped to reload, Danse took his chances.

“Ad Victoriam!” the Paladin screamed, charging head on into the Courser. At first, he thought he was going to topple the man. But the Courser took a hold of Danse’s Power Armor by the handles, and tossed him aside like a disoriented bull. Danse’s head spun as he toppled to the ground, and he went cross-eyed as the Courser’s pistol was shoved in between his eyes. Well…  _ that  _ had been a grave miscalculation.

Before the Courser could open fire, the man was tackled aside, the weapon misfiring just off to the side of Danse’s head. Danse flinched at the shot, then sat up to find that Deacon was the reason he was still breathing, and cringed as he listened to the man reel back his hand and slam it down into the Courser’s face. There was a crack, and Deacon cursed loudly, before he was thrown off of the other man. Danse’s eyes widened when he realized that the Courser was no longer in possession of his gun.

He looked down, right next to where he was, and saw it. Quickly, Danse rolled over (which was difficult to do in Power Armor), and snatched it up before the Courser could come back for it. The next thing he knew, there was a sharp pain in his right eye, and he was completely blind, his entire head erupting in pain. Vaguely, he was aware of someone attempting to yank the Institute pistol out of his grip, but he held on tighter, even when he felt it firing into the chestplate of his Power Armor once, twice, thrice, four times, before the attacker was yanked away. Still, Danse held the pistol, groaning in agony. At least he’d managed to disarm the Synth. Things would be easier for the rest of the group now. Even if he was down for the count, there was no way they couldn’t win now.

But the next thing he knew, there was another person at his side. He felt cool metal brushing past his cheek, which caused him to flinch, and then there was a sharp jab in his neck. Danse cried out in alarm, but slowly, his vision began to return to him. Danse blinked away the blur rapidly as the pain subsided, only to be faced with Nick Valentine. The old Synth patted his cheek like it was nothing, offering a small, hesitant smile as he tried to speed his return to consciousness.

“That was one helluva kick in the head. Shocked your neck didn’t snap and your head come clean off. Come on, come back to us, soldier boy. Stimpack should help with the vision, but I can give no guarantees about that sucker headache.”

Danse sat up, slowly, and Nick helped ease the way. When he was up completely, Nick handed him back his laser rifle, before darting off to continue working on the Courser without another word towards the Brotherhood of Steel Paladin. For a moment, Danse remained dazed, uncertain if it really had been Nick, of all people, to help him, but there wasn’t time to dwell. He stumbled to his feet, and rushed to help the rest of the group finish the job.

Cait had just punched the Courser in the back with the Power Fist, to which Kori responded with a bullet in his gut. The man gasped, and MacCready took the opportunity to send a bullet through the side of his ribcage from his position back at the door of the room. Blood spewed from the man’s lips, before Deacon held him still, and Danse shot him three more times.

The Courser finally,  _ finally _ , fell still after a shuddering yell of agony and seething hatred.

Deacon let the body fall to the floor as if it was contaminated, and every single one of them sighed with relief when the corpse’s ragdolling truly was that of a dead man. They beheld the extent of the damage they had done to it, before Danse placed his hands on his hips, and laughed.

“We win,” Deacon sighed, sounding disappointed and bored almost. But everyone knew that he was just as relieved as the rest of them. “Again.”

“So  _ that  _ was the supposedly terrifying Institute Courser?” Danse taunted, nudging the body with his boot. “Hm. Didn’t put up much of a fight. I’ve killed ferals more tenacious.”

“You keep telling yourself that, Danse,” Nick mumbled, preparing a smoke for himself. He offered one to Cait, who declined, but MacCready picked one out of the pack and offered the both of them a light. Deacon hardly seemed to notice the exchange had happened at all as Nick continued. “I can guarantee you though, you would have lost sight in that eye for a week, maybe more, had I not given you that stim as quick as I did. You’re still going to bruise, for sure, but at least you won’t have brain damage.”

Danse frowned, and was about to say something, but he was interrupted by a cracking sound. He glanced down, and then promptly wished he hadn’t, upon seeing Kori begin working her way inside the Courser’s skull.

“Alright,” the vault dweller said, sounding on the verge of gagging. “Time to dig for gold…”

“Coulda given us weaker hearts a bit of warning?” Cait complained as Mac held a hand to his mouth, looking very queasy. Nick, in the meantime, knelt next to Kori, holding aside a fragment of skull as she demolished the brain inside.

“I doubt the Institute is going to appreciate us putting down one of their lackeys,” he lamented, blowing smoke as he watched Kori dig. “If you weren’t on their radar before this, you definitely will be now.”

“I’ll be certain to have her back, in that case,” Danse butt in, staring down at Nick. The Synth looked up and narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, I’m sure you will,” he grumbled.

“Get along,” Kori barked, for the tenth time that day. “We’re almost done here. Just need to… there!”

There was a sickening squelch, and then, Kori held up some sort of strange chip proudly, fingers coated in brain matter and blood. MacCready retched again, and walked away from the group and elsewhere in the room.

“Oh man,” Deacon marveled, suddenly sounding very excited. “You have to take that to Des-- to my guys. This could be  _ huge _ .”

Danse shot down that idea the moment the other man finished speaking. “I agree, it would be wise to take that chip and have it decrypted as soon as possible. However, I also recommend that Proctor Quinlan take a look at it instead. I guarantee that he is capable of decoding the information stored in that device in a fraction of the time that the people you have connections to, Deacon.”

Kori furrowed her brow, and opened her mouth to speak, but was stopped by a small, barely audible voice from the other side of a window behind them. Kori blinked, standing slowly, before whistling to Nick and nodding her head towards the console. The old Synth hacked it without further instruction, and once the door opened, a young woman peered around the corner nervously.

“T-thank you,” she said, meekly, looking at all of the party members anxiously. Particularly Danse. “I don’t know what else to say…”

“You don’t have to say anything,” Kori consoled her, hiding her bloodied hand behind her back. “You’re welcome.”

The woman looked like she wanted to say more, but thought better of it after looking at Danse again. “Thanks, again. I’m going to look for some more supplies before heading out. Maybe… we’ll meet again. Under better circumstances. I… I hope we do.”

Kori nodded to the woman, before watching her walk away and out of the room. Then, she turned back to address the group, then to Danse. She sighed, shaking her head and motioning for him to follow her aside. Danse did so without hesitation.

“Listen,” she explained once they were far enough away from the group, “I get what you’re trying to do. I get what you want. You want to further the Brotherhood’s knowledge on the Institute, and I get that, I really do. It’s part of their primary purpose, after all. But… Quinlan doesn’t have the technology to decode this thing. The Brotherhood hasn’t had hands-on experience with Synths and the technology that composes them. On the other hand…”

“Kori,” Danse begged, knowing where this was going, but the vault dweller continued.

“On the other hand, the Railroad comes into contact with Synths every  _ day _ \--”

“Absolutely  _ not _ ,” the Paladin gasped, pacing, and his hands would have been in his hair were they not restricted by tons of metal. “You wouldn’t  _ dream _ of--”

“Listen, Danse,  _ Danse _ , my life doesn’t belong to the Brotherhood like yours does, okay? I-- look, I took the oath, I’m still loyal, but the Railroad is the  _ only _ place I can turn to right this moment. I’m more than happy to share the information I find with Quinlan  _ after  _ I’ve found my son. Right now, the Brotherhood is so focused on destroying the Institute, they are a  _ threat  _ to my mission. If I give them the information to get inside, it’s very possible they’ll go to war right away before I even have a  _ chance _ to find Shaun. I’m going to get the Brotherhood in, I swear on my life, but I  _ need  _ you to trust me, Danse. Please. Look-- look at what we did  _ here _ , today, because you trusted me.”

Kori gestured to the group behind them. MacCready had taken the Courser’s jacket and was flaunting about in it like a drunken man, while the other three snorted and cackled at his antics and impressions. Danse didn’t even turn around to look at it, too busy glaring down at Kori.

“First,” Danse growled, “You made a deal with a Super Mutant. Then, you make me work side by side with a Synth. Now you’re turning to the  _ Railroad  _ for assistance? I thought you were better than this, Knight. They aid our enemies, free thinking machines that should be abolished from the earth.”

“Don’t you believe in redemption, Danse?” The vault dweller looked up at him, deeply wounded by his accusations. “Don’t you believe that there  _ can  _ be  _ good  _ non-humans out there who deserve a second chance? Not every Ghoul is feral, not every Synth is a body snatcher, not every Super Mutant wants to--”

“Their intentions aren’t what matters here!” Danse whispered harshly. “They’re results of an atomic war and nuclear fallout and humanity’s negligence and inability to pace itself! Whether they’re an active threat to humanity or not, each and every one is still a reminder that--”

“That  _ we’re  _ the ones who fucked up the world? That they’re just victims of circumstance and the Brotherhood ostracises them for  _ our  _ mistakes? For  _ my  _ generation’s mistakes?” Kori pulled back from Danse, looking disgusted, and shook her head. “Listen. I’m going to send you back to Diamond City with Nick-- ah! Don’t say anything! You’re going to  _ defend  _ Nick, keep him out of trouble, and then you’re free to stay as far away from him as you want. Understood?”

Danse’s nostrils flared, and he jabbed an angry finger into Kori’s chest. “You are  _ pushing my limits,  _ Knight.”

She shoved against his armor-clad chest, seething. “The only thing I’m  _ pushing _ , is  _ you _ towards a better understanding of these people that saved me from  _ myself  _ when I had  _ nothing left _ . I would not  _ be  _ here having this conversation with you if these people hadn’t lifted me from the ashes of a world long dead that I was still  _ desperately  _ clutching to.”

The Paladin’s expression softened, but only some. Kori shook her head, and brushed past him, ending the conversation with a cold shoulder.

“Alright, listen up,” she said, and MacCready stopped mid-theater kiss with Deacon. Cait was clutching her stomach and wheezing with laughter while Nick was chuckling and shaking his head at them. “Deacon, we’re heading off to the Railroad together. Mac, you and Cait head back to Sanctuary together. I don’t want you to be alone anymore, Cait. I know we were having a test-period to see if you could play nice with people now that you’re off the chems, but I think it’s time for you to meet my friends. I think today, you’ve proved you’ve got your self-control back.”

The Irish girl nodded her gratitude, trying hard to hide her excitement and failing.

“Nick…”

The Synth perked up at the sound of his name.

“You’re taking Danse with you back to Diamond City. Show him where Home Plate is, and then you’re free to keep your distance.”

“... Ah. Right then.” The old Gen-2 sighed, tapping off some ashes from his cig and shoving his hands in his trenchcoat pockets. “This should go just dandy.”

“He’s going to behave,” Kori comforted him, “or there’s going to be  _ hell  _ to pay. I told him what you’ve done for me, he knows what you mean to me. Only reason he’d hurt you is if he  _ really  _ doesn’t mind not having his left arm.”

Nick snorted as Danse finally approached the group, the BOS soldier clearly still not on board with the situation. Before he was within hearing range, Kori leaned in towards Nick. “Listen… maybe  _ try  _ to talk a little sense into him. I speak from experience when I say the best cure for racial radicalism is simply understanding.”

“I’ll do what I can,” the Synth sighed, “but no promises. BOS soldiers are known to be particularly stubborn in their beliefs. You know, that military propaganda bullshit never really did die with the rest of the world. It just got recycled into… well,  _ this _ .”

“I know. But I have faith in you.” Kori turned to face Danse, who was in hearing range now. “Danse… just… we’ll talk later, okay? We’ll make up. We’ll sort our feelings and our reasonings out. Just take a deep breath for me.”

The Paladin did so, albeit reluctantly.

“Ad Victoriam… right?”

Danse didn’t grace Kori with a response. She didn’t wait long enough for him to finish contemplating if he wanted to give her one. The vault dweller turned around, and gestured towards Deacon. “Alright, you and me, Deacon.”

The man nodded, and just as he was about to pass Danse, the Paladin snarled at him, “There’s something you’re keeping from me, Deacon. If I find out what it is and I don’t like it, there will be hell to pay.”

“Well, good thing I have nothing to hide then” was all Deacon responded with, smirking and shrugging, before heading towards the elevator with Kori. MacCready and Cait exchanged glances, and followed suit.

That, of course, left Nick and Danse. The Synth grunted, and took another long drag of his smoke. Danse watched him with clear disgust, but also a touch of confusion as they waited for the elevator to come back up.

“Why do you  _ do  _ that?” he demanded to know as the two waited for the elevator to come back up.

Nick arched a brow. “What, smoke?” He took the stick out of his mouth and stared at it, before shrugging and putting it back in his mouth. He spoke around it. “Habit from the old Nick. Pre-war Nick.”

“Pre-war Nick?”

“Kori didn’t tell ya?”

Danse pursed his lips. “She told me you had the memories of a pre-war civilian, but I didn’t think that the mannerisms would also be transferred over.”

“Yep.” Nick popped his lips. “Save for not being organic, I’m pretty much the same grumpy jaded detective I was over 200 years ago. I just got a new look and made some new friends.”

Danse merely hummed in response, before falling quiet. Nick coughed.

“Thanks for earlier,” he mumbled, rocking on the balls of his feet.

“Earlier?”

Nick coughed again, glancing away from the Paladin. “Yeah, for… taking the shot that you did for me.”

Danse froze up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. If I did take a shot for you, it was completely a coincidence.”

“... ah.”

The two of them stood in awkward silence, until the elevator came back up, and they left together without another word.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Another early update! Because... I'm thirsty for comments... and again, writing is coming along much faster than anticipated. Here's hoping it keeps up!
> 
> But seriously though... please leave comments. I'm very lonely.

When Danse and Nick reached the ground floor and exited the building, Nick finally found the courage to speak up. He plucked the cigarette out from between his teeth, and waved it around as he struggled to find his words.

“Listen… I know you don’t see me as being on the same level of existence as you. To be honest, I don’t see myself that way, either. But I want to understand your reasoning for wanting a guy like me, who has no ill will towards anyone unless they’ve got an inky black heart, dead just for having more metal than muscle.”

Danse looked down at Nick coldly for a moment, before sighing.

“I suppose it wouldn’t do any harm to explain my reasoning with you. If Kori trusts you, I… suppose I’ll grant you some leeway. The Brotherhood was founded on the principle that humanity is capable of redemption from its ancestors mistakes, so long as its old world-- and new world-- technology is kept in the right hands, and its advancement reasonably paced. Pre-war scientists had too much power; their pursuits were initially noble, but ultimately  they were blinded by greed. As resources began to dwindle, scientists focused more on how to defend what they had, along with taking more from others, instead of learning how to pace humanity’s growth and make more of their own resources for their respective world powers. This is what ultimately lead to the destruction of society, and nearly humanity itself. If you’re wondering what this has to do with Synths, don’t worry-- I’m getting to that.”

Nick nodded, and remained silent as Danse continued.

“Gen-3 Synths began appearing in the Capital Wasteland in about the year 2250. In 2277, during the peak of their activity, I was just seventeen-- just barely shaping into the man I am now. Around that time, I was saving up to live in Rivet City, one of the most technologically advanced places in the Capital Wasteland, and up to that point, it was still easy to tell a Synth apart from a human. There was no fear against these machines-- they were few and far between, and obviously mechanical. But now, paranoia ran rampant; any newcomer could be a Synth, or worse, someone you knew could leave… and not come back the same. And then you knew, somehow. Sometimes, though, they _did_ come back the same. Sometimes, that was what was scariest.”

Nick was staring up at Danse with a deep forlorn expression as he listened to the Paladin state his position.

“I lived in Rivet City under this suspicion and fear for five years. I can’t count the number of times that, if I was having an off day, I almost had my head shot off. I was tired of being afraid every day, not just of losing my life, but of being one of the unlucky ones that actually _were_ replaced by a Synth. I wanted things to change. I wanted the people around me and myself to not live in fear anymore. So… I joined the Brotherhood when I was twenty three. Elder Maxson took charge a year after I joined up, and completely reformed the organization from its previously overly-charitable nature. The Brotherhood was actually doing something about the problem that had been presented to us. It gave people like me hope.

“I want you to know, Valentine, that I understand that you’re different from other Synths. If what you say is true, and you _are_ a Synth with a pre-war civilian’s memories, I’ll admit, I’m… not sure what to think of you. But I also want you to understand, that free thinking machines are an insulting facsimile to the human mind, and the idea that a non-human entity can have their own thoughts and develop opinions and ideas and perform actions based on those self-created ideas is dangerous. Synths are a symbol of an organization that means to destroy what remains of humanity from the inside out. The Institute wants us to capsize on ourselves, and they’re feeding that flame with these free thinking machines that they’ve created. Not only that, but… the people here on the surface don’t have technology nearly as advanced as theirs. We don’t entirely understand how Synths work as of yet, and we don’t know if escaped Institute Synths are still a threat or not. Honestly… it’s just better to be safe than sorry.

“So, whether Gen-1 or Courser, escaped or thrown out, all Institute Synths are a threat to humanity, and therefore a threat to the Brotherhood of Steel. I don’t feel like I have to explain myself on Ghouls or Super Mutants, but I can understand your confusion about Synths due to having so many grey areas. But the simple truth of the matter is, free thinking machines are an insult and a threat to our way of life. They _need_ to be destroyed. It’s for humanity’s sake.”

The Gen-2 Synth remained quiet, for a while, before making an “uh-huh” sound, moving around the cigarette in his mouth between false teeth. “Well, I get what you mean about being afraid of the earlier generations at least. Those without their own sentient thoughts or ideas are very obviously created to carry out Institute orders. But with that in mind, Gen-3s are human in every shape and form of the word, with the only difference being they were manufactured, not born, and maybe they’ve got a little chip in their brain that feeds their brain their pre-made personality and memories. But they can’t be remotely controlled, and there are different strains of Gen-3. Some are really mindless, and some are fully rounded beings with a completely falsified past that they really, honestly believe, and some are spies sent out in the world. The problem there, is we don’t know which is which until some life-defining moment. Is it really worth harming innocent Synths for a crime they didn’t commit? Is it really humane to punish a being simply for being made? For existing?”

“It may not be,” Danse replied, staring straight ahead as they continued to walk, “but the Brotherhood is for the protection of humanity and humanity alone.”

“Well, whether you like it or not, Danse, Gen-3s _are_ human, no matter what your zealot tyrant tells you. Down to their very DNA structure, Gen-3s are absolutely human. Just because they didn’t come into this world through a damp, bloody passage as a small helpless blob of flesh and tears, just because they didn’t have childhoods, or suffer through puberty, doesn’t make them any less human, on a molecular scale.”

The Paladin narrowed his eyes, and finally looked down at Nick. “Even if so, they’re still abominations of creation. It’s not in the Institute’s right to play God the way they are. If you ask me, the Brotherhood is being merciful by killing these Synths, _especially_ Gen-3 Synths. They have no past, no family, and they _don’t age_. Imagine living in this world, making friends, allies, family of your own… and watching them die, while you don’t change for a single second.”

Nick bristled, and glared up at Danse, finally livid. “I may not be the same as I was 100 years ago, but I _have_ lived that reality, Danse. I _have_ watched so many people I’ve connected to whither away and die. I’ve seen it all-- old age, shot, drowned, suicide, sickness-- I’ve lived it all. And these memories may not belong to this particular body, but I have owned up to them, and I have _made_ them my own. Machine or not, I _am_ Nick Valentine. I am what remains of him, because he’s not here anymore. He died with the rest of the world 210 years ago, but you know what?”

Danse waited expectantly.

“You know _what,_ Danse? I enjoy being here. I enjoy being alive. Or, I guess I should say, I enjoy being online. And these old joints may creak and click in ways they shouldn’t, and this skin may be old and cracking, and maybe my voice turns to static when I’m flustered or pissed beyond belief, but so long as there are still good people in the world, whether human or Synth or Ghoul, this life is worth living. So long as I am able to do good things for those good people, my life is worth living. And for you holier-than-thou types to determine _for_ me, and people like me, whether my existence is acceptable or not, is _you_ trying to play God.”

That caused Danse’s eyes to widen. Nick continued with barely a pause.

“Playing God isn’t _just_ creating, you know. God created everything, created life, but he’s also tried to wipe us all out every once in a while. Entire races of people, or all of humanity and creation itself. For the Brotherhood to determine which races are ‘whole’ and ‘pure’ and then to go on and actively try to eradicate the rest..? In their own way, they’re no better than the Institute, trying to eliminate all surface human existence.”

The Paladin’s mouth flapped, for a while, before he snapped it shut. “While I understand and respect your train of thought, I’m inclined to disagree with it. Synths are unpredictable machines that can glitch or have orders activated at any moment, Ghouls are former humans irradiated beyond redemption, and it’s merciful to kill them, and Super Mutants are idiotic brutes that devalue human intelligence and integrity and are an active threat, no ifs or buts.”

“Listen,” Nick sighed, flicking his cigarette away, “I’m not going to get started on Ghouls with you today, but with your reasoning, Synths are no more dangerous than mentally ill humans. _Humans_ are more likely to snap and go on a murder rampage than a machine like me, with Gen-3s being no more dangerous or likely to go insane than an average human. So if you’re really that scared of Gen-3 Synths being ticking time bombs… you really oughta take a look at yourself and the people around you.”

Danse opened his mouth to argue, but promptly sealed his lips, upon realizing that he didn’t have a counter-argument in that exact moment. He exhaled noisily through his nostrils, and quickened his pace, which Nick kept up with effortlessly.

As the two of them approached the gates of Diamond City, Nick looked up at Danse.

“Look, you can argue with me all you want, but I _know_ that you blocked that Courser from shooting at me. I don’t know whether it was just instinct to protect a fellow soldier, or if you didn’t want Kori chastising you for it, or if you just… saw someone in a bad situation and stepped in, but whether you like it or not, I’m thanking you for it.”

Danse huffed. He himself still wasn’t sure why he had done it, for a Synth no less, but he had done it. He turned away from Nick. “You’re… welcome. And… thank you. For the Stimpack. I know that that probably wasn’t easy for you to do, given my nature and my behavior towards you.”

“Hey, a friend in need is a friend indeed. I just… wanted to prove to you that I’m reliable. That even with what I am and what you’ve been taught, you can trust me, Danse. And this is the part where I’d offer to buy you a drink, but uh, I doubt you want to be seen in public with me.”

Danse frowned, and looked down at himself in his Power Armor. He couldn’t believe that it was something he was actually considering… but his Brotherhood training eventually won out. “Perhaps at some other point in time, if we meet again,” he replied quietly. “I’m doubting it, and if we do, I don’t anticipate it being on good terms, but if by some stroke of luck it is… I’ll take you up on it.”

Something in the old Synth’s eyes sparked, and he offered Danse a genuine smile. “Well, it’s a start towards something better. I’m placing my bets that Kori will try to push us together again. And, again, the self-destruct sequence won’t activate when I’m around you. Cross my heart.”

The old detective began to walk away, expecting Danse to follow, but Danse stopped him with a quick call of his name. Nick stopped, and looked back towards Danse as the Paladin smirked.

“I may not be an expert on Synths… but I know that they don’t self-destruct.”

Nick’s eyes sparkled, somehow, and the laugh lines grew deeper. He chuckled, and waved Danse towards him again. “Come on, let me show you where Kori’s place is, and then this old bucket of bolts will leave you alone.”

 

* * *

 

After setting up his Power Armor outside, Danse took the key Kori had given him and walked into Home Plate. At first, there was nothing to be seen, but after feeling around for a moment, he found a light switch, and flicked it on.

He had walked into the living room entrance, and stopped short of walking into a bar stool. The word “Liquor” was inset in colorful diamonds above two bar counters perpendicular to one another, and behind there was a small kitchen, with a stove, sink, and fridge. Just outside of the bar was a jukebox, and as the power routed itself through the house, the old machine turned on by itself, playing _A Wonderful Guy_. Danse quirked a brow at the strange choice in electrical wiring.

Around the corner was what Danse assumed to be a dining area; there was a table with four chairs, plates set neatly as if dinner was ready to be served. Beyond that was the workshop section of the house-- one area was sectioned off for a bathroom, the rest of the 3/4ths contained another Power Armor station, a chemistry station, an armor crafting station, and a weapon’s workbench. The Paladin couldn’t help but smirk a little at the sight of the dog bed and the water dish next to it.

Danse headed back to the living room and took note of the couch, coffee table, and television tucked under the stairs, before making the descent up.

He wasn’t intending on tripping on a toy car. He nearly stumbled back down the stairs upon stepping on it, but managed to keep steady enough. Confused, Danse picked up the toy. It was missing a wheel, and the paint was badly faded, but mostly, he was just wondering why Kori had it here at all.

When he looked up, and saw the teddy bear on the large metal cabinet, _then_ he remembered.

Shaun.

The thought of the boy made Danse frown with sympathy for Kori. Maybe… maybe he had been too harsh on her earlier. She did make a fair point about the Brotherhood wanting to eliminate the Institute as soon as possible; perhaps keeping information about how to get in herself _was_ the correct course of action, for the time being. After all, she _had_ agreed to share the information found on the Courser chip upon finding her son. The Brotherhood would have their mission orders soon enough.

He placed the car on the cabinet next to the bear and a globe, before continuing his inspection of the house. There was another metal cabinet above a desk tucked in the corner, this time hung up on the wall. The desk itself was wooden, and on it was a metal fan and a typewriter. What Danse found strange, however, was the terminal next to the desk. It was connection to the house’s wiring, but not to any mechanism that he could see for himself. Perhaps she simply had it for notes, or for playing holotapes. He knew Elder Maxson had a personal terminal for just that reason, but then what was the typewriter for? He tried to wrack his brain for ideas, but came up blank. Danse shook his head, and moved up the second flight of stairs.

This was where Kori slept-- there was the bed, and a nightstand, and a shelf, and a dresser across from it all, and that was it. It was rather threadbare, even for Kori. Across from the bed, however, there was a ladder leading to the roof of the building. Just to satisfy his curiosity, he climbed up, and opened the hatch.

He was actually surprised to discover that the hatch lead to the interior of an old public transport vehicle, completely stripped of any notable features. But what caught his attention even more, was the hammock strung across the left side, along with the lantern and the stack of books on the crate next to it, and to his right, a small table with two chairs, and a cooler _filled_ with Quantum Nuka Colas.

When he walked outside of the old vehicle frame, there was a chair, and then down a short flight of steps, a barbeque, a doghouse, and another chair. It overlooked the city center of Diamond City, and there was a telescope resting in the lawn chair close to the edge of the roof of the building. Danse picked it up and placed it to his eyes, settling in on the mayor’s office high above the city. The lights were on, and he seemed to be arguing with his assistant.

Danse chuckled, and placed the telescope back in its place. Politics never rested, even as the sun was starting to vanish behind the city walls. He put his hands on his hips, stretching left and right, before leaning against the side of the doghouse and began to think.

Even _if_ he had been too harsh on Kori for turning to the Railroad for assistance, there was still the issue of her denying his authority in front of all of her friends. He was certain she had done it to assert her dominance over them, show them that she could even make a _Paladin_ kneel before her. Even if it hadn’t been Danse, that was still unacceptable behavior, and it needed to be dealt with accordingly. She couldn’t threaten people like that-- it was disgusting, and needed to be addressed as soon as possible.

Surely, she was nearly done with her work with the Railroad. He would stay up in wait for her, because this was important enough to lose out on some sleep. He was willing to make that sacrifice to rectify the situation.

Danse headed back into the house after that, and as he descended the ladder back to the bedroom floor, made a mental checklist of things to do in order to pass the time. He glanced at the alarm clock by Kori’s bed-- it was currently 7:23 in the evening. What he really wanted, first and foremost, was a nice shower. He went to her dresser (after taking a moment to assure himself he was just looking for clothes, no intentions of invading any privacy) and unfortunately only managed to find some sweatpants, but it would do. He figured, as he continued down, that he would then make some dinner, because it was likely Kori would be exhausted and starving by the time she got back. Hopefully there was some meat in the refrigerator, or in the ice box back in the workshop. He also spotted a shelf of pre-war holotapes by the television, and figured that maybe he would try and see if he could get one to work on the old device. That would be one story to bring home to the boys.

He estimated that all those activities would take up about three and a half to four hours, which would put him at 11:00 at night or later. If Kori still had not returned at that point, then he would call it a night and head to bed. It seemed like a solid plan, he figured to himself, and even if he was asleep, at least Kori would be left with something to eat.

 

* * *

 

It was the early hours of the morning, maybe three or four, when Kori finally walked through the door of Home Plate. Danse didn’t wake until the wooden stairs started to creak about a half hour after she’d walked in, and even then, he was still barely conscious. He grumbled in annoyance at having been woken, throwing the sheets over his head.

A hand at his shoulder prevented him from falling back asleep.

“Danse,” Kori whispered, shaking him lightly. “Danse, please move over.”

After a very long, dramatic sigh, Danse did as she asked, moving closer to the wall. Soon enough, the vault dweller slipped in beside him, sighing and throwing an arm over his side, before nuzzling her head in between his shoulder blades.

 _That_ caused him to wake up a little more. This wasn’t Kori asking for sex. This was Kori just… _holding_ him. Danse had thought that their arrangement was purely for sexual gratification, and this sort of contact was… largely unfamiliar to him. Sure, he held the woman close to him when they had sex, but other times… not so much. He made a confused sound, and turned over just enough to peer behind him at Kori. She was nosing into the space between his shoulder blades, and his heart did an excited yet nervous flip at the affection. “Knight?”

Kori cracked open an eye. “Really? We’re in my own house, here. You can call me by name.”

“Kori… why are you being physically affectionate? I… is something wrong?”

Now it was Kori’s turn to look and sound confused. “What are you talking about? Can’t I just… your body heat is… um…”

There was an awkward pause, and then, Kori was pulling away, looking very embarrassed. “Yeah, you’re right, that was kind of weird. Sorry.”

Danse quirked an eyebrow, and sighed. Talking about Kori’s insubordination could wait for the morning. He turned over to face her, the only light coming from cracks in the wall and Diamond City’s stadium lights outside. “Kni-- Kori… you can talk to me. If something happened in the time that we were apart, you can tell me.”

The vault dweller gazed into Danse’s dark umber stare, and sunk down a little into the bed sheets under the sheer intensity and concern. “Well… we got the information we needed out of the Courser chip. That went fine. Without a hitch, actually.”

“But..?”

Kori frowned, and hid her eyes under the sheets. Danse reached out, and pulled them down just enough to see them.

“Look, it’s… it’s not that important,” she mumbled, averting her gaze at all costs. “I’m just tired, and it was a mental slip.”

The Paladin arched a brow. “A mental slip…”

The vault dweller closed her eyes.

“Before the war, when I was a lawyer, I worked late hours. There was always too much paperwork to be done, but I managed it somehow. But it came at the cost at coming home hours like this. And it wasn’t bad, it was just… tiring. And all I ever wanted after nights like those…”

Danse’s heart dropped in realization.

“Gabriel,” he whispered.

Kori’s eyes snapped open. “Wh-- n-no no, no, it’s-- it’s not like that. I--” She exhaled noisily from her nose. “Gabriel was away at war a lot during those days. I came home to an empty bed, which was… it was even harder when I was pregnant with Shaun. It wasn’t so much Gabriel I wanted… it was just… anyone. _Anything_. Just… some kind of body warmth. I think I’m just digging my hole deeper here--”

“Don’t worry,” Danse hushed her, and tentatively, his arms wrapped around her smaller frame and pulled her close. At first, the both of them were tense.

“You-- you don’t have to do this,” she whispered. She sounded choked up.

“I’m alright with it,” Danse lied, forcing himself to relax. The truth was, a part of him was alright with this-- the human part, the part of him that craved the contact just as much as she did. But most of him was against this. The part of him that knew that this shouldn’t be a part of their arrangement. The part of him that knew that this kind of heart to heart and physical contact lead to romantic attraction and dependency too dangerous to hold as a member of the Brotherhood of Steel. Too dangerous to hold in the Wasteland in general.

But, he reasoned with himself, and with Kori: “I feel as if this will be beneficial to your overall mental health. It’s scientifically proven that physical contact, such as embracing another human being, causes a release of dopamine that wills the body to relax--”

“Danse?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re a dork.”

The Paladin sputtered.

“Paladin Dork.”

“I thought we weren’t using titles in your home?” he bit back, but it was teasing as he felt the woman finally melt into his embrace.

Kori, in response, merely shrugged. “My home, my rules. Go back to sleep; I’m sorry I woke you.”

Danse just made a dismissive sound in response, and barely a moment later, he was already fast asleep.

 

* * *

 

“You’re kidding, right?”

“I’m not.” Danse leaned back on the bar stool, narrowing his eyes at Kori as she gave him an incredulous look. She had her hands on her hips, cocked to one side as she debated whether Danse was serious or not about his accusations in regards to the way she treated her allies, even though he had just said he was.

“You-- you honestly think I would take advantage of people like that.”

“I’m just stating what I noticed the other day, and the conclusion I drew as a result of your actions,” the Paladin replied, spinning his spoon in his oatmeal as a small distraction.

Kori placed both of her palms flat on the bar counter. “First of all, I want you to know, I am really, _truly_ , deeply offended. I thought we had a better understanding of each other, but I guess I was wrong. Second, I’ll have you know, Danse, that I would never-- _never_ \-- take advantage of _any_ of my friends in that way. I wasn’t using you as an ‘example’ or whatever you’re trying to tell me here, it was _my_ mission, and we were operating under _my_ terms. I understand that it’s instinct for you to want to take control of the situation-- I know I’m not the only soldier you’ve ever had under your command-- and I forgive you for that, but you have to realize that operating under Brotherhood tenants isn’t always the answer and doesn’t always get the best results.”

Danse knit his brow together. “While that may be true that it was _your_ mission and not the Brotherhood’s, you forced me into cooperating with the very being that I’m supposed to destroy. That’s not okay, and the way you went about it was disrespectful and aggressive. You shouldn’t be _threatening_ me into going against everything I stand for.”

“I didn’t _threaten_ you,” Kori argued, but Danse butt back in.

“You said to me that if I were to bring harm to Nick, you would leave the Brotherhood. That’s a threat to me because not only does that make me look bad to Maxson, but also because you _know_ that I trust you and consider you a close friend. It was wrong of you to take advantage of my hospitality and eagerness to help you, and I really am hurt and more wary of our relationship as a result of it.”

The vault dweller looked astounded. “You’re worried about what _Maxson_ will think of _you_ if I leave the Brotherhood? Danse, I’ve seen the way he regards you; it’s borderline _impossible_ for him to see you any less as you are now for a decision _I_ make--”

“But as you sponsor, it reflects poorly on me for being unable to open your eyes to the reality of our situation. It may not affect my standing with him, but he _will_ be disappointed, and I don’t want to let him down. He deserves me at my best.”

“What Maxson deserves is a goddamn _vacation_. The guy looks like he hasn’t bathed in a year, or slept in two. A guy his age is supposed to be finding a pretty girl, a house to live in and call his own, not leading a soldier brigade--”

“Kori, this isn’t your white picket fence world anymore!” Danse exclaimed, slamming his fist down on the counter. The woman jolted at the action, before narrowing her eyes at Danse as he continued to speak.

“There are no more group gatherings for dances or going to restaurants, there are no more sunny picnic days that I’ve read about in so many magazines, and there isn’t time to be a child! That’s the price you pay for existing in this world-- you learn how to shoot a gun, and then you’re a man, and that’s the end of it. Even _if_ Arthur wasn’t Elder of this division, his outcome would be more or less the same. This world isn’t as black and white as you make it out to be, Kori; there is no peaceful life separated from war-- it’s all the damn same.”

Kori looked down and away from Danse, biting her lip and leaning back against the wall behind her. She closed her eyes and threw her head back. “Damn it… I know. I know.” She tossed her empty bowl on the counter, and Danse cringed at the noisy clatter of it. “I just… sometimes it’s easier to pretend people can still live the way they used to. That girls can still wear pretty dresses and gossip under willow trees while boys holler at them across the lawn.”

She folded her arms. “Not to… make you feel inadequate or anything, Danse, but… I don’t think you’ll ever understand how it feels to lose everything that once defined you and the world around you. Not at a scale like this, at least.”

“Maybe not,” he agreed. “Maybe. To be honest… I really hope that doesn’t happen. I can’t imagine what it must feel like, but I do know that you’re handling everything that’s been thrown at you remarkably well.”

Kori didn’t reply at first. But, a moment later, she finally looked up at Danse again with a small, sad smile. “Sorry… I think we got off topic a bit there. We were arguing, right?”

Danse pursed his lips. “I… yes. Look, I just… I need you to realize that, whether your missions or not, it’s not okay for you to tell me that I can’t kill a Synth, or a Ghoul. It’s literally an integral part of my mission statement. They don’t belong on this earth, and they _need_ to be destroyed, regardless of being friend or foe.”

Kori ran a hand down her face. “Okay. How about this. If I don’t personally know them, they’re free game if you’re being threatened by them, or if you _think_ they’re going to attack or threaten you. But if they are someone that has given me aid in the past, whether Synth, Ghoul, or Super Mutant, they’re hands off. Okay? I don’t want to keep you from following your orders, but these people have also helped me _immensely_ before I knew you and before we were traveling together. It’s… really likely I wouldn’t be alive if it weren’t for some of these people. If you can agree to let _my_ friends live, and work with them when necessary, then I’ll be sure to follow the Brotherhood tenants as you see fit, and if you listen to my orders on _my_ missions, I’ll listen to yours.”

Danse sighed, and shook his head slowly. “... alright. Fine. Deal. But can I get a list of people to look out for? Which of your friends are Synths, and which are Ghouls, etc.”

Kori took a seat across from Danse, and rattled them off. “Nick Valentine, Curie, and Glory are all of my Synth friends. John Hancock, mayor of Goodneighbor, is a very close friend of mine, and a Ghoul, along with Kent Connolly, and back in Sanctuary, there’s a Vault-Tec representative that helped sign up my family for Vault 111. I owed him one for that, so he lives there now. I wouldn’t consider him a _friend_ , but he’s definitely on the no-kill list. And just in case, I’m adding Virgil to that list, and another Super Mutant named Strong. I doubt that we’ll ever run in with him because… I really _really_ don’t like Super Mutants, but he keeps himself in check, and I’m supposed to help rehabilitate him or something in my spare time.”

Danse took a moment to take them all to memory, before glaring at Kori again. “Anyone else?”

“I don’t think so,” she replied, pushing Danse’s bowl of oatmeal back towards him. “So long as you’re at least _decent_ to those people, anyone else is free game, so long as you’re _reasonable_ about it. Now hurry up and finish eating; I’m calling a Vertibird once we’re outside of the city, and we’ve got to go talk to Virgil to get the schematics for teleportation.”

Reluctantly, Danse did so, glaring at the vault dweller the whole time. It wasn’t the solution he had been anticipating, or even wanting, but he supposed that coming to any sort of agreement at all was worth _something_.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> help i'm too deep into working on this story, i know no other life. what is friends. time is a social construct. how old am i. why is the rum gone. **help**

“Here’s the simple explanation,” Virgil instructed Kori as he handed her the schematics he’d clumsily put together. “You’ll need to build a device that will hijack the signal the Institute uses to teleport Coursers, and send you instead. You know the craziest part of the design? That classical music station… that’s the carrier signal for the relay. All the data’s on harmonic frequencies. You’ve been hearing it all along.”

Danse had to admit to himself, that actually  _ was  _ rather interesting. Even if neither he nor Kori ever tuned in to the classical station, they knew that it existed. He himself had never thought about where the signal was coming from.

Kori looked up to Virgil with grateful eyes, but he stopped her before she could speak. “I want to be clear that this isn’t my area of expertise. I was BioScience, not Engineering or Advanced Systems or anything.”

Kori smiled kindly, and patted the Super Mutant’s arm (much to Danse’s dismay). “I’m sure it will work,” she assured him, ever the confident woman.

“For the record,” Virgil replied, “I haven’t made any promises. But if you can build this device, and make use of that code, you should be able to override the signal from the Institute’s relay. So, can you? I mean, can you build it? You have people that can help? This is a lot for one person… even you.”

“Come on. Have I given you reason to doubt me?”

“No… but do you realize how critical this is? For both of us? And don’t you forget our agreement. Now go on, take these and get to work. You do whatever it takes, call on whoever you know to help you.”

“It’ll get done,” Kori assured him as Virgil turned away and began walking back inside his cave. “I’ll get you that serum, just don’t go anywhere!”

She then turned back around to Danse, handing him a Radaway for the road while also injecting herself. As they waited for the packages to empty into their blood streams, she looked over the papers, and frowned more and more.

“Damn,” she cursed. “I really am going to need help building this thing. It’s a behemoth.”

Danse peered over her shoulder to take a look for himself, arching a brow at the complicated scientific jargon and mathematical equations. “Who are you going to turn to?” he inquired to know.

Kori hummed in thought, shaking her head with a Power Armor hand. “The Railroad isn’t gonna have room to build this thing, so turning to Tinker Tom again is out of the question… and the Minutemen have good intentions, but I seriously doubt Sturges is going to have the know-how or resources to do this in a reasonable amount of time… so that leaves…”

Danse quirked an eyebrow, before both shot up simultaneously.  _ Was she going to..? _

Kori rolled up the plans, and looked to Danse with a nervous grin. “Let’s go talk to the boys back home, shall we?”

“You mean… the Brotherhood?” he inquired hopefully. When she nodded her affirmative, he couldn’t help but beam with pride.

“Oustanding,” he replied, nearly vibrating right out of his armor in excitement, “Proctor Ingram will be  _ more  _ than sufficient in aiding us in this task. Of course, we’ll need to clear the project with Elder Maxson, but I’m certain he won’t decline being included in this momentous feat.”

“Of course he wouldn’t,” Kori laughed, patting Danse on the back before standing. “But I need you to keep in mind, before the Brotherhood can run in at all, I  _ need _ to have first access, alone. I need to be able to find Shaun before the Brotherhood can go wild.”

“We will speak with Elder Maxson about your intentions when we return to the Prydwen,” Danase assured her. “I’ll back you up if necessary, but believe it or not, Maxson,  _ does  _ have a merciful side. So long as the Institute’s destruction is assured, I’m sure he’ll let you have first access.”

“Just so long as I’ve got you backing me, I feel confident enough to show him what we’ve got. Now come on; I’ll need you to give me a rundown on the best way for us to take down a Deathclaw if we run into  _ another  _ one on our way out of the Glowing Sea.”

The Paladin screwed up his face. “"My advice for hunting a Deathclaw...? Return to base, and forget about it. You'll live longer."

The vault dweller snorted and snickered, and Danse laughed along with her, quite enjoying the sound.

 

* * *

 

Kori and Danse hopped off of the Vertibird that had picked them up from the edge of the Glowing Sea together, first the Power Armor clad soldier, and then the small vault dweller, who had made the Vertibird stop at Red Rocket to take off her power armor. She took his hand when he offered it to her, hopping down gracefully onto the flight deck of the Prydwen. Under her arm she held the teleporter plans tightly, and the two of them headed into the Command Deck.

Thankfully, the Elder was there, waiting for them. Upon hearing the door open, he turned around, and approached them swiftly.

“I received news that the two of you were returning to the Prydwen,” he said. He saluted the both of them, and they returned the motion, before he guided them into the Observation Deck of the blimp. “If you have a moment, Knight Farnsworth, I would like to have a word with you.”

“I’m free,” she replied, blinking in surprise when a Scribe rushed past her with a bottle of wine and three wine glasses. Once inside, the Elder turned to address Kori, eyes narrowed as the Scribe began pouring drinks.

“By now, I’m sure you’ve deduced that our arrival in the Commonwealth wasn’t coincidental, during your travels throughout it with Paladin Danse. We’re here because of a unique energy reading recorded by his recon team. According to our scribes, the reading indicated a level of technology that only the Institute could achieve. The moment this information came to light, our mission became clear. The Institute, and everyone responsible for the creation of the Synths must be eliminated, at all costs. To accomplish this goal, we need to locate the Institute's headquarters.”

Maxson took two of the wine glasses, and handed one of each to both Kori and Danse, before taking one for himself. When they gave him a quizzical look, he shrugged. “Danse is my finest soldier, and you are  _ his _ finest soldier. Your return should be celebrated, especially given that the both of you are in one piece.”

They relaxed a bit with that explanation as the Elder continued. “I’ve had our scribes meticulously searching the Commonwealth, but they’ve come up empty-handed. The only logical explanation, is that they’ve gone underground. With that being said…”

He arched an eyebrow at Kori. 

“I believe I heard rumor that you and Paladin Danse went into the Glowing Sea in search of information on the Institute..?”

Kori looked at Danse with an anxious smirk, before reaching into her pack and pulling out Virgil’s schematics. “Today’s your lucky day. I have a way inside.”

For a moment, Maxson actually looked excited. He took the schematics from her, before his half-smile began to fade. Apparently, he was just as confused by the schematics as Kori and Danse had been.

“Hmm. The method is useless without the means to make it work. Perhaps… perhaps we should pool our resources to achieve our common goal. Together, we’ll make them pay for their crimes. I’ll call ahead and brief Proctor Ingram. Report to the airport tomorrow after you’ve both had a chance to rest, and get to work on your project right away. Whatever resources we have on hand, you are welcome to in your endeavors.”

He was about to dismiss them, but Kori stepped forwards. “Permission to make a request, Elder Maxson?”

The man blinked in surprised, but nodded his affirmative regardless. Kori looked back at Danse, and he knew what she was about to ask.

“As you know, I have every reason to believe that my son is somewhere inside the Institute. When I have finished building this machine… I request that, before any Brotherhood intervention, I be allowed to infiltrate the Institute myself, uninterrupted. I want to find my baby boy before any shots are fired.”

At this, the Elder’s expression softened considerably. “You’re in luck, Knight; your request falls in line with our initial plan regardless. We wanted a soldier to infiltrate the Institute before we enacted on the rest of our plan, to give us an idea of what forces we’re up against, the internal structure, and if the Institute is composed of any civilians. I was initially planning on giving the task to Scribe Haylen, but since you require entrance for your own purposes, I feel confident enough to assign the task to you instead.”

Danse sighed with relief at not having to argue with Maxson over the issue, and Kori swelled with confidence and gratefulness. “Thank you, Elder. Whatever you need of me in there, I’ll be sure to follow your orders.”

“Of course. Now, get some rest, the both of you. I am betting it’s been some time since you’ve slept somewhere as secure as this.”

Kori and Danse gave their partially drunken wine back to the Scribe, before saluting the Elder and heading above deck to their respective quarters.

 

* * *

 

On the ground the next day, the two of them made their way through the airport, until they spotted Proctor Ingram, instructing some workers on positioning for barriers. She stopped her work when she saw the two approaching, mechanical hands on her hips.

“Elder Maxson said you’d help me build the Signal Interceptor?”

The woman chuckled. “So, it looks like  _ you’re  _ calling the shots around here now, huh? Alright, I’ll bite, what does your new miracle device do?”

Kori pulled out the schematics and handed them to the Prydwen mechanic. “The Institute uses teleportation to get in and out. This machine can hijack their signal and send me instead.”

“Teleportation?” Ingram sounded amazed, and she scoured over the blueprints briefly. “Molecular transmission via encrypted RF waves? Okay, even I have to admit… that’s genius. This explains why we’ve been picking up anomalous energy readings all across the Commonwealth. Not to mention how they get their tin soldiers to come out of the damn walls. And this little beauty…” She gestured to the papers. “... allows you to literally hijack a return signal. Instead of grabbing the intended target, it grabs you instead. Impressive.”

Kori and Danse both looked completely lost, even as the woman beamed down at the both of them. The vault dweller shook herself from her stupor. “Well, you… definitely know your stuff.”

“Damn right I do,” Ingram huffed. “It’s difficult to make out all the details here, but I’m thinking you can get started by building a Stabilized Reflector Platform. It’s gonna take a cargo hold full of high-grade metal, but I’m sure we have plenty of it right here at the airport.”

“Can you give me a list of what I’ll need to build this platform, and anything else?”

“Of course,” Proctor Ingram walked over to a small desk tucked out of the way, nabbing a paper and pen and hastily jotting down a list of materials before handing it back to Kori. The vault dweller scanned over it briefly, before nodding her thanks to the mechanic and walking off.

“So?” Danse replied, peering over Kori’s shoulder.

“Well, we’ve got enough for the Stabilizer Platform, among other things, but for a future construction, we’ll need a biometric scanner. Unfortunately, I don’t happen to have one on me. Those are usually found at hospitals, so I guess we’re going for a little trip.”

“Alright then,” the Paladin sighed, cracking his neck. “I believe the nearest medical facility will be northwest of us. We should start out now, while we still have daylight.”

“Agreed,” Kori replied, checking her Pip-Boy. She hummed in interest when a blip appeared nearby. “And look at that, Cait actually has her tracking beacon for once.”

“Tracking beacon?” Danse frowned.

“Yeah, don’t worry, it’s nothing sinister; I give them to all of my companions so if they decide to wander off on their own, I can find out where they’ve gone if I need their help. It’s not a controlling thing, they’re not inclined to carry it with them. I know Deacon doesn’t carry his. Looks like Cait’s on the way to the nearest hospital, at County Crossing. I say we pick her up, enlist her help. It’s likely she’ll be more hospitable now that Deacon’s out of the group, and she  _ can  _ be nice. I think she was just caught off guard by you the first time we met.”

While Danse was reluctant, he knew that a part of being a member of the Brotherhood of Steel was to try to win the hearts and minds of the people. Perhaps spending more time with Cait would help further that cause. “Alright. I have no arguments with that.”

“Great.” The vault dweller smiled at Danse, pounding a hand to her chest, before the two of them walked along the broken roads of the Wasteland.

 

* * *

 

“Kori!” Cait said excitedly, upon spotting the vault dweller approaching. But when she caught sight of Danse, her excitement decreased immediately. “... and Tin Can Man.”

It was still a better greeting than the first time they had met.

“Hey Cait,” Kori called, pulling in the Irish woman for a tight hug. “Wanna help me and Danse do some treasure hunting?”

At that, Cait raised her eyebrows. “This isn’t gonna be a repeat of Jamaica Plain, is it?”

“No, no, we’re just hunting for a biometric scanner. I need one to create a teleporter to get into the Institute.”

Cait’s eyes widened. “Shit… you really  _ are  _ serious about this whole thing.”

Kori nodded. “We’re in the process of building the teleporter right now. Only thing we’re missing is the biometric scanner, and then we can get started. You wanna help us search?”

Cait shot Danse a skeptical sideways glare, before shrugging. “Awe, hell, why not. Wasn’t headin’ anywhere in particular anyways.”

“Yeah, I was gonna ask about that,” the vault dweller continued as the three of them continued north. “I thought I sent you back to Sanctuary with Mac.”

The red-head girl looked a bit sheepish and ashamed. “To tell ya the truth, Kori… I got a bit intimidated by the idea of finally bein’ integrated into your little family. You understand… it’s a big leap forwards from a million steps back. I just… felt like I needed a little more time, so I started headin’ out this direction after Mac made me promise to lug around yer damn tracking device. Guess it did me some good after all, seein’ as you’re here now.”

“That’s the purpose of it,” Kori assured her with a pat to her back.

The three of them all made small conversation as they worked towards Med-Tek Research, and Cait and Danse even opened up to each other a little-- all under Kori’s guidance, of course. She talked about her many fights in the Combat Zone with the Paladin, and he in turn detailed various missions of his own. By the time they all reached the hospital, Danse and Cait were actually having civil conversation without Kori’s help.

“Alright,” Kori sighed, looking around the place, with several Super Mutant corpses scattered about. “Oh, and don’t mind the bodies, don’t let that scare you-- that’s my work. I’ll start here, on the ground floor, you guys start up top.”

Cait rolled her eyes, and leaned in towards Danse. “Tryin’ to get us to like each other again,” she tsked, shaking her head.

“I don’t necessarily see how that’s a bad thing,” the Paladin replied, moving towards a collapsed part of the second floor and making his way up through there. “If we are going to be working together frequently like this, I feel like Kori’s on the right track. We’ll be more likely to cooperate well if we have a better understanding of one another. I don’t feel like we should be forced to open up about our pasts, but having an intellectual conversation about something philosophical, or even some sort of guessing game, would be paramount in improving our relationship. It’s often the things we rarely talk about that reveal the most about ourselves.”

At first Cait said nothing; it seemed as if she was having a difficult time swallowing Danse’s words, or processing what they meant. But, eventually, she clambered up the collapsed floor right alongside him, and took her bat off of her back and banged it noisily against the railing beside them as they walked. “Alright then, Danse, I’ll let ya pull me leg for a bit. How ‘bout I pick first topic? Let’s talk ‘bout coping mechanisms.”

He made a strange expression at the suggestion. “Coping mechanisms? You mean… psychological coping mechanisms?”

“Didn’t know physical was a thing. Is it?”

Danse blinked. “I’m… not certain. Forget my previous statement.”

Cait chortled, and swung her bat into a wooden leg of a table, taking great satisfaction in the way the leg snapped clean off and the table collapsed. “Well, I’m supposing I just wanna know how you handle stress, or anxiety. What do you do to blow off steam when it feels like the whole world’s out to get ya?”

Danse pondered the question for a moment. “Well, more often than not, I’ll dedicate myself to field missions-- preferably something that requires a lot of shooting, a lot of self defense and enemy elimination. Getting my blood pumping is an excellent way to distract me from any problem out of my control, or to work off undue stress.”

“A good one,” Cait agreed with a nod as the two turned into the first room, “but surely it can’t be the only one. What about any guiltier indulgences?”

The Paladin pursed his lips, before figuring it wouldn’t hurt to tell her, as much as it embarrassed him. “I… I have an addiction to Fancy Lad Snack Cakes. If you so much as put a single one in front of me, it’s in my hand before I even realize what I’m doing. They’re over-sweetened garbage, I know this, but it’s just… it’s delicious. And it’s a comfort food.”

Cait  _ was  _ snorting, trying to hide her laughter, and Danse frowned at the sight before she spoke up. “Everyone’s allowed to have their guilty pleasure food. I just never thought that someone like you would fall prey to such nasty pre-war junk.”

“I  _ am  _ human, Cait,” the Paladin replied. “Soldier or not.”

“No no, I get it.” The woman opened up a cabinet, and cursed when she didn’t find a biometric scanner.

“So… what is it for you, then?” Danse inquired. “Your… way of coping with the world, I mean.”

“Well… I’m sure Kori’s told ya, but if not… I used to be a Psycho addict. Hardcore. If I wasn’t on it, I was breakin’ down, constantly. It was a very dark time in me life. It was really the only thing I let in, literally. I kept potential friends at arm’s length, and that included Kori.  _ Especially  _ Kori. But… I think that was why she pushed so hard to get to understand me. To make me… well, better.”

Danse nodded, offering a kind smile at the touching story, short as it may have been. “Well, if not Psycho anymore, then what?”

“Well…” She reeled back and swung her bat into a window, cackling as the glass shattered. “I love swingin’ me bat into shite. That’s always a good way to relax. But when I was travelin’ with Kori all that time ago, she was always listenin’ to Diamond City Radio. Swear to God, I could sing most of the songs they play from heart from how often I was hearing them all over, and over again. But that works for me, too; singin out my feelings. Often times I let myself go hoarse, but it’s a small pain that works to keep me sane. I’ve got a lot of pent-up pain still. I’m doing better, but the things that have happened to me in the past… they still haunt me.”

“And that’s understandable,” Danse said quietly, opening up a safe and cursing softly when still, no luck. “I’m pleased to hear that your chem addiction has been cured. I’m sure it was quite the struggle.”

“Oh, I was scared for my goddamn life,” Cait replied, looking up at Danse with horrified eyes to prove her point further. “Were it not for Kori… I don’t like to think what would have happened to me.”

The two finished that room in silence, before moving on to a third.

“... Hmm… speakin’ of Kori… any idea what  _ her  _ coping methods are?”

Danse gave Cait an unimpressed look. “I don’t think we should be gossipping about Knight Farnsworth in this way.”

“Awe, come on, she talks about the stick up your ass all the time to me.”

Cait snickered when Danse actually looked offended and shocked.

“Nah, I’m teasing. But seriously, I’ve heard rumors about what she gets up to to forget about this shitshow she’s found herself in, and some of it’s nasty stuff, but really, there’s only one I believe to really possibly be true.”

And damn him, he couldn’t help but be curious. “And that would be..?”

Cait kicked open a filing cabinet, before glancing up at Danse. “I think she’s a sex addict. She’s got the insertion to keep from gettin’ pregnant, I know because I was stuck outside during one of her appointments, and she gets the universal STD shot when she goes to the doc for rads or bruises. Don’t know why she isn’t sleepin’ with me, if that’s the case. I wouldn’t mind having that woman sit on me face.”

If she noticed how red and quiet Danse had gone, she made no comment about it, and continued talking.

“‘Course, with that being said, I don’t  _ know  _ any of her potential partners personally, but a woman like that doesn’t get shots and insertions as regularly as she does unless she’s  _ very  _ sexually active. But it’s just a hunch o’ mine; maybe she’s just very particular ‘bout her physical health, or she’s worried about--”

“I think that’s enough, Cait,” the Paladin coughed, facing away from her and very interested in a desk at the other end of the room. “I-- I personally think it’s… great that Knight Farnsworth is so pro-active about her physical health.”

“Yeah, I guess so-- hey! I found one!”

Danse turned around to see Cait holding up a biometric scanner like she’d won the lottery. She beamed over at Danse proudly, before running out of the room and leaning over the balcony and shouting down to the first floor.

“Hey, Kori! I found yer damn device!”

The vault dweller poked her head out of a broken window, grinning broadly. “Hey, that’s great! Go ahead and head on down here; I’ll take it off your hands and head back to Boston Airport with Danse.”

Both Cait and Danse descended the flight of stairs together, and the Irish woman handed Kori the biometric scanner with a flourish of her hand.

“Thank  _ you  _ very much,” Kori said with a wink, and Danse didn’t miss the light blush of her cheeks. “Now… you think you’re ready to head to Sanctuary now?”

Cait pursed her lips, and fiddled a little. “I… awe, shite, if I never try, I’ll never know. I think I’ve had enough time to wallow in every possibility of what could go wrong. I’ll head back and finally bite the damn bullet.”

“That’s my girl,” Kori praised her, and she pulled Cait in for a hug, patting her back. “You can do this. Everyone will love you, so go knock their socks off. Be the life of the party. Make them wish they’re you.”

Cait snorted at that. “Nobody wishes they were me. But I’ll be sure to make them jealous of me energy at least.”

And with those parting words, Cait set off, waving Danse and Kori farewell as she exited the building before them. Kori fiddled with the biometric scanner in her hands for a moment, before looking up at Danse with a strange look.

“What’s that look for?” he asked her, uncertain what it meant.

“I could be asking you the same thing,” she replied, arching a brow his way. “Did Cait say something? You look like you just had a revelation, and not the good kind.”

Danse’s mouth flapped, before he snapped it shut and attempted to steel his expression. “It’s a matter that can be discussed later, when I’ve had more time to process it. In the meantime, let’s head back to Boston Airport and start construction on the Molecular Relay.”

Kori hesitated for a moment, before nodding. “Right. You’re right. The clock’s ticking, and we shouldn’t waste time. Lead the way, Paladin.”

She gestured to the door of the building with a wave of her hand, and Danse did as she beckoned.

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day was spent enlisting Brotherhood Scribes to help with the construction, and Danse and Kori working side-by side to lift heavy sheets of metal, instruct where to place them, cutting and re-joining wires, welding, hammering, and the like. The vault dweller seemed tireless-- the only times Danse saw her take a break was midday, when the heat was pressing down on them, and she took a greased rag to wipe at her sweat-stained chest, and during dinner, claiming a few chairs in the derelict airport as a resting place.

Danse set down his own tools and joined her about five minutes after, a beer in his hand and a sandwich in the other. He sat down in the one spot her head wasn’t where there was still room for him, cracking open the cold one and taking a long, slow swig.

““This teleportation device you’re building is a feat of engineering genius. It’s a crime that the Institute is exploiting this technology for their own nefarious purposes. It seems to be coming together just fine, as well” he commented, gesturing to the beam emitter currently being constructed off to one side of the stabilizer platform. “Proctor Ingram hasn’t had any complaints so far, and she’s been monitoring it all very closely. Are you sure you’re not cut out for Scribe work? You do enough traveling and picking up junk for it.”

The vault dweller snickered, reaching an arm back to bat lightly against Danse’s. “I like deciding for  _ myself  _ what I pick up, not being told what I’m allowed to carry.”

“Scribes bring back useless junk all the time. It seems to be a universal trait among them. If it catches their attention, it’s theirs.”

“The Prydwen wouldn’t have room for all of the shit I pick up, and you know that.”

The Paladin could only laugh in agreement, knowing full well that she was right. He took another sip of his beer as the two of them watched the sun beginning to touch the horizon to the west.

“So… wanna tell me what was bothering you earlier?” Kori pressed, angling her head to look up at Danse, as awkward as it was.

Danse set down his beer between his knees, shaking his head and scratching his stubble. He figured that, yes, he’d had enough time to figure with himself that Kori’s frequent doctor’s visits were for her own physical health, and not because she was sexually promiscuous. Still, the only way to completely ease his mind about the issue, would be to ask. “Well… I suppose things have quieted down enough, both here at the construction site and in my own mind. Though I do ask that you take what I have to say with a grain of salt, as the idea sprung from a conversation Cait and I had.”

“Oh, of course,” Kori consoled him. “Cait’s always coming up with new ways to piss people off. Don’t be afraid to speak your mind. I’m right here.”

Danse looked around them one last time, making certain that anyone within sight was too far away to overhear their conversation, and he let his elbows rest on his knees. “I won’t go into detail about the conversation itself-- I’m allowed to have my secrets-- but something Cait implied really stuck with me, like old glue. I suppose I’ll just be blunt about it. Kori… are you… are you sleeping with anyone else?”

That caused her to shoot up immediately, and as she did so, Danse stumbled over his words.

“I mean, I-- I understand that the purpose of the kind of arrangement we have is so that we  _ are  _ able to sleep with other people, I understand that this is an open arrangement, please don’t misunderstand my question as jealousy or possessiveness.”

And that was true. Mostly. Kori was an adult, and he knew what friends with benefits were. He wasn’t born a month ago. But at the same time… some deep part of him he refused to acknowledge snarled at the thought of Kori sleeping with anyone else at the same time that she was with him. He pushed the thought away and continued.

“I’m simply asking because… well, not only for health reasons, but because… I simply feel that, as your partner, it’s my right to know. I know it wasn’t explicitly discussed that we would divulge any other partners to one another, so I don’t expect you to give me an answer, but… look, let me start from the top--”

“Danse,” Kori crooned, and she reached a hand up and ruffled his normally well-combed hair. “Danse Danse Danse. You’re cute when you’re concerned.”

Cute?! Hmmph.

“Well, to answer your question, currently, you’re my only partner. And that’s the honest to God truth of it. If I  _ were  _ to find anyone else, I’d of course talk to you  _ before  _ sleeping with them, because that’s just common courtesy. I mean, I’ll be frank… MacCready’s cute, but he’s like an overeager puppy. He’d probably cum without me laying a single hand on him if I just said the word ‘orgasm’. And Curie… hell, she’s a gorgeous woman, but she’s a little  _ too  _ innocent for my tastes. She’s gonna find someone that’s going to treat her the way she deserves. So for now, it’s just us.”

“I believe I have yet to meet Curie,” Danse replied, trying to imagine Kori with any of those two and failing. Or, more correctly, imaging Kori with anyone other than  _ himself _ and failing. “If I remember correctly, you said that she was a Synth?”

“Yeah, but it’s complicated. See, she  _ used  _ to be a Miss Nanny, but because of her desire to have human traits in order to further her pursuit in science to help humanity, we found a brain-dead Synth and input her memories and habits into it. Don’t get me wrong, I am well aware that’s  _ exactly  _ what the Brotherhood is fighting against, but… I don’t know, if you met her, you couldn’t  _ possibly  _ hate her.”

“I’ll make that determination when I come face to face with her myself.” Danse took another sip of beer, before sighing. “I… thank you, for being honest with me. It’s a weight off my shoulders to know the truth, and even more so to know that, so far, we’re exclusive.”

“Well, to be honest, Danse? I… I wouldn’t… do that to you, you know? I respect you more than that.” It sounded as if she had wanted to say something else, but she continued without looking back. “I know that we’ve had our disagreements in the past, but I really do want to be a good soldier for you. It may be based on compromises that you wouldn’t make for anyone else, but… I feel like that honestly goes to show how tight our bond’s become, that you grant me enough trust to make my own decisions.”

And Danse knew, in a way, that she was right; were she any other soldier, he would not tolerate any of her choices thus far for one single second-- the Glowing Sea, allowing Virgil to live, splitting up at all, having Synths and Ghouls for friends… all of it was unacceptable in the Brotherhood’s views. He honestly didn’t know anymore why he allowed her to get away with as much as she did. He didn’t know  _ why  _ she felt so strongly about protecting the rights of Ghouls and Synths, but at the same time… she didn’t know why he had such a hatred of them, besides for just being taught it from Brotherhood training.

“I wouldn’t call it trust so much as understanding that you’re an adult, and I can’t control the decisions you make. I don’t approve of them, but no one’s gotten hurt so far, I suppose. Despite all that, this partnership has turned out to be a rewarding experience… for both of us. You’ve earned my respect, Knight, and I hope that means something to you. At this point, honestly, I don’t feel like there’s anything else I could teach you about being a Brotherhood soldier that you don’t already know, even if you make exceptions that, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t tolerate. I already know that there are other soldiers here who would flay you alive if they knew you had non-human friends that you actively interact with and defend. But you’re… you’re your own person.”

At first, Kori was quiet, uncharacteristically so. But then, she arched a curious eyebrow at the Paladin. “I know there’s more you want to say.” And damn her, she was right. As usual. “Go on.”

Danse sighed, and tilted his head back. If Kori was going to understand him… he was going to need to open up to her. “Let me start at the beginning. I grew up alone in the Capital Wasteland. Spent most of my childhood picking through the ruins and selling scrap. When I was a bit older, and had a few caps to my name, I moved into Rivet City and opened a junk stand. While I was there, I met a guy named Cutler. We got along pretty well, watched each other’s backs and kept each other out of trouble. When the Brotherhood came through on a recruiting run, we felt like it was the best way out of our nowhere lives, so we joined up.”

The vault dweller laughed lightly, moving slightly closer. “I have a hard time picturing you as anything but a soldier.”

“Clearly, I was ignoring my calling. Anyway, about a year after we were posted to the Prydwen, Cutler vanished on a scouting op. It took some convincing, but I was able to persuade my CO to let me assemble a squad and search for him. It took almost three weeks, but we tracked his team down to a Super Mutant hive. Those wretched abominations had slaughtered everyone  _ but  _ Cutler. He should have been so lucky.”

He had to take a deep breath to collect himself before speaking further. 

“The mutant bastards used their FEV to change him into one of their own kind. He wasn’t Cutler anymore. I had to… it was my duty to… to put him down.”

Kori’s near starstruck expression instantly had changed into one of horror and sympathy. She sat up straighter, clasping her hands in her lap as she gave Danse her full attention. “You… you did what the Brotherhood taught you.”

“Then you understand why it had to be done” The Paladin sighed-- was he seriously about to confess to her how much she really meant to him? All this fear of losing her, of her turning her back on him… was he really about to spill it all? His mouth continued on without his brain. 

“Ever since Cutler died, I’ve seen other soldiers come and go. Some were brave, some were honest… hell, some were even downright heroic. But I’d never consider any of them to be a good friend, a friend like Cutler was… until now. It’s a good feeling, but it frightens me all the same. Having a bond with someone, then losing them… it changes you. I don’t want to go through that again.”

The vault dweller bit her lip. And then, there was a hand on Danse’s thigh.

“It would never be that way with me… I care about you too much to let that happen.”

He couldn’t stop himself from reeling back in surprise. She had just… completely reciprocated his feelings. Told him she felt the same. That she…  _ cared  _ about him too much to make him suffer. When he looked at her face more carefully, he thought… was she  _ blushing? _

No; Kori was too smooth for that. Too in control of herself. It was probably a trick of the fleeting sunlight.

“I… I didn’t know you felt that strongly about our… well, about us,” he stammered, fiddling with his half empty beer bottle. Danse had to shake his head to further clear his thoughts. “I’m… sorry if I seem confused. You’ve… certainly given me something to think about. I just… thought you deserved to know how I felt. If you feel that I’ve overstepped my bounds, I completely understand. Whatever the case may be, I appreciate the fact that you took the time to listen.”

“Hey, Danse, we’ve been over this,” Kori teased lightly, punching his arm for emphasis, and she was back to that strong exterior that he was familiar with. “You can talk to me about anything. We’re both adults. We’re both civilized people. If there’s a problem between us, or something we want to get off of our chests, we’ll talk it out, no problem.”

“You’re right, you’re right,” Danse relented, and he bumped his shoulder into hers. “Thank you, for being so patient and understanding with me.”

“The feeling’s mutual.” Kori beamed at him, before looking around, and noticing that they were entirely alone, leaned in close.

“Listen… it’s getting late, and I think we’re both beat. I think what we both need is some long, cool showers, and then maybe some… alone time? Discuss battle strategy?”

The Paladin quirked an eyebrow, before smirking down at the woman next to him. “I’m very much open to that suggestion.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday... is SINday.
> 
> Also I'm dying.
> 
> Keep me alive with comments pls and thanks <3

They walked into Paladin Danse’s room together, and they were a tangle of limbs and hot mouths against still shower-damp skin before the door even closed. She bunched the front of his suit in her hands, and he tangled his fingers of one hand in her hair, pulling it back to nip and bite at her throat tauntingly, promising that he didn’t plan to stand still and let her do all the work.

But even that promise wasn’t enough, and she pushed him away with a gentle, promising chuckle of her own. “I brought something,” she informed him, moving to where she’d dropped her supply bag by the door and kneeling to rummage through it.

But Danse was worked up. Impatient. He knelt behind her, continuing to nose into her neck and bite at the junction where it met her shoulder.

“Mmm, you’re needy tonight,” the vault dweller chuckled breathlessly, undistracted from her task. “Are you going to be good for me and let me guide you?”

“Mmm, yes.”

“Are you going to trust me? We’re going to be treading some uncharted waters here for you. Do you trust me to only make you feel good?”

“I do,” he replied, without hesitation. After the one-on-one they had shared tonight… there was no way he couldn’t trust her after that.

Finally, Kori found what she was searching for, and pulled them out. It was a blindfold, and a silk scarf. Danse furrowed his brow at the sight of them, confused as to what the silk was for, and who would be the one wearing the blindfold. Kori fiddled with the silk scarf between her fingertips.

“You know…” she paused, and then started up again, standing slowly as Danse followed, hands on her hips. “You know… that first night I saw you, in the Cambridge police station… I think what really caught my attention was when you started fingering yourself, and how  _ delicious  _ you sounded.”

“Oh?”

Kori nodded, turning around in Danse’s embrace. She grinned up at him, rubbing the silk across one cheek, and the blindfold across the other.

“Have you ever… cum just from fingering yourself? Without touching your cock?”

Danse struggled to speak, for a moment. “I… have not. No.”

Kori’s grin grew, for a moment, before it fell, and she sounded suddenly very vulnerable. “This… may be the last time we meet for a while. The Molecular Relay will probably be ready by tomorrow night, so… I wanted to make tonight special for you. I want to tie you up and blindfold you and just spoil you stupid. But I could tell earlier you wanted to be a little more… hands on. So I’ll do whatever you want, but if you’ll let me, I really want to tie you down and finger you myself.”

The Paladin’s eyes fluttered at the idea, but the thought of Kori letting him do whatever he wanted… that was also a pretty damn good option on the table. He had topped, of course, but she had always dictated the position, the events that lead up to it. This would be complete and total control. He thought hard, for a moment.

“Why not both?”

Kori’s eyes lit up like sparks. “Really? You think you’re up for that much action?”

“If you think you’re going to be gone in the Institute for a while, then yes. I want to make use of as much of tonight as possible.” Danse snatched her close to him again by her waist, pressing his hardness into her thigh to show off just how sure he was. “You can blindfold me and restrain me first, and then after, I’ll think of something else for us to do.”

“That’s a plan I can get behind,” she responded, before crashing her lips against his.

Danse allowed Kori to lead him blindly back to his bed, and she threw his undershirt off and over his head before pushing him down onto the sheets. He smirked as Kori clambered on top of him, hands curling into the waistband of her pants to pull them down, but the vault dweller chided him softly as she pulled his hands away.

“No no,” she whispered, pinning his hands next to his head as she leaned down to kiss him again. “I’m spoiling you, remember? You put up with a lot of bullshit the past week; you’ve earned this.”

“I’m not sure that being tied down and blindfolded is necessarily a treat for  _ me _ ,” the Paladin teased, rolling his hips up.

“Oh, it is,” Kori promised, sitting up and getting off of him. “Lay on your pillow, on your back. Hands above your head. I can almost 99% guarantee you’re going to love this.”

Danse did as he was commanded, rolling over so that he was where she asked him, and raised his arms above him, hands slipping through the bars of his headboard. “Like this?”

“Yes,  _ perfect _ ,” she praised, once again settling on top of him, before grabbing the silk and folding it parallel to itself several times. She reached down and got to work, and Danse indulged in the sight of her breasts in front of him, the loose fabric of her own undershirt drooping low enough that he could see them in all of their glory. He was so transfixed by the sight, that he didn’t remember what Kori was doing, until the cool, smooth fabric tightened around his wrists. His hands had a bar between them, and he couldn’t separate his wrists, even with a pretty decent tug.

“Alright,” Kori sighed, reaching over and plucking the blindfold from off of the bed. She waggled it around in Danse’s view. “Color?”

He had to eye the item for a moment, before letting his head rest back on the pillow. “Green. I’m ready.”

But before she gave it to him, she ran a reassuring hand down his bare chest. “Just remember-- you can use a color at any time. I don’t have to necessarily ask before you say anything. If the color changes at any time, just speak up. I promise I’m listening. Okay?”

Danse looked up at Kori, at her raven black locks of hair, at the pear-green sparkle in her eyes, at the walnut tone of her skin, the freckles across her cheekbones and the bridge of her nose, and the way she waited for his affirmative with such care in her gaze… he had to swallow an unexpected lump in his throat, before laying back down.

“I understand,” he said to her. “Go ahead.”

He closed his eyes, but that didn’t stop the light from his room being blocked out once she was actually putting on the blindfold. He bit his lip, a twinge of nervous unease settling in the pit of his stomach at having such a crucial sense taken from him. But he was quickly soothed by a gentle hand at the side of his face, and he leaned into Kori’s touch with a shaking breath.

Her lips on his were much slower this time; softer, gentler. More focused on feeling rather than intensity. Without his vision to aid him, the surprisingly sweet motion left Danse’s head spinning. When she pulled away, he was left breathless, chest heaving and lips swollen,  _ aching  _ for her to return.

“You’re doing well,” Kori whispered, hands running up and down over his pecs. Her lips were over the pulse point in his neck, breath hot and eager. “I want to bite you. Can I bite you? I won’t break skin…”

Danse shifted beneath Kori, biting his lip and feeling his cock give a conflicted throb. Sure, she’d grazed her teeth on him before, left her fair share of hickeys and bruises, but flat out  _ biting  _ was new and frightening. Still… he wasn’t  _ completely  _ opposed to it… and how would he know if it was something he enjoyed if he never tried?

After a second’s contemplation, Danse gulped and nodded, before hoarsely confirming, “Yes.”

The vault dweller smiled against his skin, before leaving a butterfly-light kiss. “Just breathe, Danse,” she urged, and then, there was the sharp pain that he had been expecting, and the Paladin yelped at the jolt that ran through him. His hips bucked, more in a reaction to get Kori off of him more than out of arousal, but he couldn’t deny that there was a certain…  _ allure  _ to the pain. His hands strained to move to take a hold of her head (to pull her closer, he realized, after a moment of clarity), but they were still held fast by the silk bindings around his wrists.

She sucked on the skin where she’d bitten, for a moment, and vaguely he worried about the bruise it would leave behind, but it was momentary. When her teeth finally pulled out of the indents she’d left behind, and she ran her tongue over the tender skin, Danse couldn’t help the whimper that bubbled out of him.

“You okay?” Kori asked, fingertips tracing the stubble under his jaw.  _ Why did this all have to feel so much more intimate? What was different? _

“Yeah,” he sighed, flexing his hands a little before clearing his throat. “I… you can… do that again. If you want.”

His jaw was tilted up by those gentle fingers, and then her mouth settled again near the last place she had bitten him, overlapping the previous mark. When she bit down this time, she was rewarded with a groan of pleasure-pain, rather than a shout of just pure pain.

“H _ -Harder _ ,” Danse wheezed, abs tensing, and he hissed when she did as he requested, sucking on the skin she had in her teeth. He did squeak in surprise when the bud of his nipple was tugged on, and then there was a long moan as she ground down on him. “Okay, n-now you’re just playing dirty.”

“How can I be playing dirty when I never issued a challenge or game? I’m just doing a little teasing.”

“You’re stealing the breath from my lungs is what you’re doing, and I think things will end far sooner than you like if you pull surprise moves on me like that.” Danse pouted a little, and he could envision Kori’s smile as she laughed, soft and radiant.

“That’s the whole point of being blindfolded, darling.”

Darling.  _ Darling _ . Why did that word make his heart sing the way it did?

He didn’t have long to think about it-- two hands were at his nipples, tugging and pinching, and the Paladin’s hips bucked again, rubbing against and between Kori’s legs as he shuddered. Danse grit his teeth in frustration as his hands once again were met with the resistance of the silk scarf, and the cool metal of the headboard. He strained, for a moment, before falling back against the sheets with a huff, mouth parted and panting.

“Damn it, Kori,” he cursed her, letting his head fall to one side as he panted against an arm.

She responded to that statement with a lick and a soft bite to one hardened bud, and Danse jolted again. “Damn it, Kori,  _ please _ !”

Her hands stilled. “Hmm? Please? Please what?”

The Paladin panted. Shit. That really  _ was  _ the question, wasn’t it? Fuck, what  _ did  _ he want? Danse made a conflicted, frustrated humming sound, and threw his head back.

“T-Touch me.”

“Touch you? I’ve been touching you this whole time.”

_ Fucking tease. _ “Touch my cock,” he insisted further, not yet enough in the foggy haze of arousal for the word to roll off of his tongue easily.

The vault dweller rubbed her hips back and forth, over his still clothed erection. Damn it, he  _ knew  _ she was smirking right now, he could hear it in her snickering. “Like this?” she asked as she grinded.

“No,” he moaned, just barely hiding a frustrated laugh. “With-- with your hands.”

With a thoughtful hum, Kori lifted herself off of Danse, and then let one hand continue the same motion as before, still rubbing him over his pants.

“I’m going to kill you,” he promised, fighting against the silk scarf and laughing as she snickered at his helplessness. The teasing hadn’t reached annoying or unbearable levels just yet, and he knew she was just having some fun with him. There was nothing malicious about this, even if he didn’t know  _ why  _ she was choosing to draw this out the way she was.

“Come on, Danse,” Kori crooned, and he felt her rest her chin on his sternum. “Use your words. Be specific.”

“Argh! Okay. Take off my pants--  _ and  _ my underwear-- then stroke my cock,  _ please _ .”

“Awe, there we go,” she praised him, and he was more embarrassed at the smile that spread across his face at the silliness of it all rather than the humiliation of being so specific about what he wanted done to him. Danse sighed with relief when he felt Kori’s hands slide beneath the waistband of his sweats, and he maneuvered his hips around to aid her in taking it off. His underwear went with it all, and from the dip of the bed, he could tell that she’d settled between his thighs while they were still spread.

And then she swore, and suddenly, the dip in the bed was gone. Danse went tense.

“Kori?” he called, worried. She’d left the bed. Why had she left the bed?

“It’s fine, it’s fine,” she assured him. “I forgot to grab the lube. Sorry, I’m just getting it from my bag and then I’ll be right back with you.”

Okay. So she wasn’t even leaving the room. The Paladin let himself relax, knowing that even if he couldn’t see her, she wasn’t leaving the room, she was still nearby. He was okay.

The dipping of the bed as she rejoined him was a relief, and Danse sighed, clenching his hands to keep blood flowing through his arms. A hand spread his thighs open, and as it did so, the vault dweller whispered, “Color?”

“Not gonna lie,” Danse admitted, “I was yellow when you started leaving me, but I’m green again now.”

“Sorry,” Kori apologized, leaving a kiss of the same nature on his tummy. Danse recognized the sound of a tube of lube being opened from previous sessions, though the knowledge that it was going to be used on him for once made his toes curl excitedly.

Admitting it aloud would feel like a crime, but Danse had really only ever used two fingers on himself before, and even then, rarely with lube. But the thought of having someone  _ else's  _ fingers inside of him, finding that sensitive spot and making him writhe the way he made himself writhe, smoother, more confident,  _ harder _ … the Paladin wiggled in excitement, biting his lip and trying to will away the silk scarf with his mind. He wanted to touch, wanted to feel Kori’s skin under his fingertips while she touched him…

“Ah! F-Fuck--” Danse swore when he felt a hot, wet tongue on his cock, the tip dipping into the slit, before backing away with a breathy chuckle.

“Maybe next time,” Kori lamented, before she was spreading his legs again, only this time, she was propping them up on her own thighs, scooting in close to the space between Danse’s legs. “You ready?”

Shakily, Danse nodded, and his erection strained against his abdomen, hard and hot.

The first brush of a lube-slick finger over his hole came as a shock, but not an unpleasant one. Danse swallowed a soft whine, and Kori shushed him gently with her free hand running down his thigh.

“Come on,” she urged him. “Breathe. You know how this works, right?”

The Paladin nodded, and forced himself to relax, letting his breathing slow and tension flood out of his body.

The first finger inside was nothing new, or frightening-- it was different only in that it was someone else’s hand, someone else’s fingers giving him pleasure as they quested inside, but otherwise, it wasn’t an unfamiliar process at all. While just a tinge of tension remained, it finally seeped out once Kori reached the bottom knuckle of her hand, and she began to search gently for his prostate.

“Let me know when you feel good,” the vault dweller requested, and it only took a minute or two before Danse twitched, and his firmly-shut mouth parted on a quiet pant of pleasure, warmth seeping through him. And then, Kori was adding a second finger, pressing in both slowly, allowing him to grow accustomed to the stretch.

By now, Danse’s arms were shaking, both from attempting (weakly) to escape his bindings, and from the tight coil of expectancy wound up in his gut. Kori wasn’t going to just stop at two, and he knew this. Three was more than he had taken before. Should he say something? Confess that he wasn’t as experienced as she had maybe been lead to believe? He considered it, for a moment, before figuring… she was already taking it slow and steady now; Danse seriously doubted that would suddenly change once the third finger was added.

“You’re doing so good,” Kori praised him, and his heart sang again, pounding behind his ribcage. His throbbing length twitched, and her hand wrapped around it to give a few good strokes, just for good measure. The Paladin whimpered at the touch, his hips trying to follow her hand as she pulled away, before a curl of her fingers right  _ there _ made pre-cum dribble out of the head in a thick glob.

“Fuck,” she whispered, repeating the motion as she spread her fingers a little, and Danse moaned. “You really like this, don’t you? So good, to just lay there and let me finger your hot, tight ass like this.”

Danse choked on his own spit, and as she scissored her two fingers, he managed to ground out, “It’s-- it’s good… you’re so good…”

Kori chuckled, pulling out until just her fingertips remained, and then she was positioning three there, ready to thrust in. But before she did so, Danse felt the woman crawl up his body, and leave a light, chaste kiss on his swollen, spit-sticky lips. “Hearing you say that makes me feel like magic,” she confessed, before she was working in those three fingers.

Danse grunted at the stretch, and decided that he wanted a distraction. He knew Kori was still close, could feel her breath wash over his face, and he brought his head up in a blind attempt to find her lips. She made a surprised, “oh!” sound, when he missed and just barely caught the corner of her lip, but she closed the distance, and let Danse lead. The kiss quickly grew desperate, his tongue questing inside to clash with hers, to intertwine and close the space between them that much further.

He pulled away, to catch his breath and because it was difficult to hold himself up without the use of his arms. Danse dropped back down onto the bed, and begged breathlessly, “Bite me again.”

Her three fingers were all the way in, but they were currently unmoving, and Danse still felt too tense, too tight for it to work out just yet. But when Kori did as he requested, digging her teeth into the other side of his neck, away from the first two marks, the Paladin cried out, and nearly came then and there. His vision swam, dark and light spots all across his eyelids, and he could  _ feel  _ his balls coming back down from their tense, ready to blow position from before.

“Oh, God,” Danse cursed, his whole body sinking into the sheets as he came back from the edge, and it hit him that he almost had an orgasm from pain alone.  _ Pain _ . The thought, to him, was slightly concerning. He bit his lip, wishing now more than ever that his arms were free.

At least… part of him was wishing. But most of him somehow found the restriction even more erotic. The idea that he was helpless to whatever Kori wanted to do to him, and he could struggle and fight all he wanted, to no avail… 

Kori had complete and total control over him, and that was somehow far more arousing than anything else. She would tell him to do something, and regardless of what she wanted, he could have little to no control to give it to her. He  _ couldn’t  _ obey. It was frustrating in the best possible way.

Kori released the hold she had on Danse’s neck, and started pistoning her three fingers in and out of his stretched hole. She kept them slightly crooked, so that every drag in and out caught against his prostate, leaving him shuddering and gasping for breath. His feet scrabbled against the sheets, finding little purchase in order to buck back down on her movements.

“God, I wish you could see yourself,” Kori praised him, one hand smoothing up and down the expanse of his abdomen. “You’re flushed down to your chest… your muscles, tense, your arms shaking… your cock jolting, aching to be touched, your thighs quivering… you’re a fucking masterpiece, Danse. You look  _ so  _ fucking good. I can hardly believe, after all this time, I’ve got you speared on my fingers like this. Goddamn  _ perfect _ .”

And there it was again-- that climb towards climax, causing his breath to come out short and his hips to move of their own accord. There was a slight tearing sound from somewhere, but all Danse could think about was how  _ close  _ he was…

“You wanna cum, don’t you? Good. I want you to, too. I can feel you, clenching around my fingers. I can’t wait to see what you’d look like with a thick plastic cock up your ass, my hands around your throat--”

The rest of the vault dwellers words were lost on Danse, as he came with a choked cry, throbbing cock spilling onto his stomach in weak, fluttering pulses. He couldn’t find it in himself to catch his breath, simply writhing around Kori’s fingers and hearing more tearing fabric. Even with the blindfold on, white spots of light danced behind his eyelids, pulsing in time with the aftershocks of his orgasm.

Danse fell limp after a few moments, body still trembling in overstimulation as Kori continued to thrust her fingers in and out of him lightly. Soon enough, however, she pulled out, and Danse found himself already wanting those fingers right back inside, keeping him full. A hand began trailing up his body, towards his face.

“I’m going to take the blindfold off now,” she informed him as her hand came to settle underneath one of the straps that were keeping it on his head. “Things may be a little bright for a second.”

The Paladin nodded, and sure enough, he could barely keep his eyes open against the harsh light of his own room. He squinted, in an attempt to force himself to see, but then, there was a face hovering over his, blocking out the oppressive glare. Kori was all he could see, and she beamed down at him as she reached up to untie his hands from behind the headboard.

“Color?” she asked as she slipped the fabric from his wrists. The silk had been stretched thin, the previously smooth surface now disrupted and uneven, likely beyond repair.

“I’m green,” he whispered, staring up into Kori’s eyes. He sat up, slowly, and she retreated to give him the room. Danse rubbed his wrists, working out some of the numbness, before giving Kori a curious stare. She had stripped down sometime between when he’d been blindfolded and when he’d cum, and the space between her legs was very slick, like she’s been touching herself. She arched an eyebrow inquisitively at the Paladin’s expression.

“Did you… say something about a ‘plastic cock’?” he asked.

“Oh. Yeah.” The vault dweller laughed. “I dunno, it sounded better in my mind than saying ‘dildo’ or ‘strapon’. You sure seemed to like the idea.”

It was partially true; Danse would be lying if the idea of being fucked, especially after the way Kori’s fingering felt, didn’t appeal to him. With that being said, however, he didn’t actually  _ know  _ what a dildo or a strapon  _ was _ . His expression must have reflected this, because Kori explained it to him.

“So, obviously, I’m a woman; the most penetration I can give you naturally is with my fingers. But some male partners in a female/male relationship crave more than that. So pre-war sex companies created these devices called dildos and strapons. Dildos are just phallic shaped sex toys, usually made out of rubber or silicon, while strapons are just an extension of dildos in that they’re made to be worn by women to have sex with another partner in the same way that a man can.”

Danse’s eyes widened in recognition, as he recalled some of the strange objects he’d found in Kori’s dresser back at the Red Rocket truck stop. His cock gave a decidedly interested twitch. This did not go unnoticed.

“Next time we’re at Red Rocket, if you’re interested,” Kori offered with a confident smirk, “I’d be  _ more  _ than just excited to top you.”

Danse blushed, and looked away from Kori, though he couldn’t stop the nervous smile that crept onto his features. “It is definitely something worth looking into,” he figured, and Kori placed a gentle hand on his knee to bring him back to her.

“Well,” she crooned, leaning in close and teasing her fingers along the length of his still hard shaft, “I’ve had my fun with you. If you’re still feeling up to a round two… I have yet to cum myself, and I  _ did  _ promise you anything your heart desires…”

At the memory that, yes, that  _ had  _ been what they had decided on, Danse perked up, looking Kori up and down. After what she had done for him (well, mostly for herself, but he had still enjoyed it thoroughly), it would be almost rude of him to simply just lay her down and fuck her like he always did. No. After a gift like that, he needed to at  _ least  _ try to have some sexual creativity. He took a moment to think, carefully. What could he possibly offer Kori that she would actually find interesting? Was there something here, in this room, that he could work with…

Ooh.  _ That  _ was something he could work with.

Danse stood, and he took a gentle hold of Kori’s wrist. She allowed him to pull her off of the bed, onto the rug to the left and in front of a set of lockers.

“Alright, what do you have planned?” she asked in a sing song voice.

The next thing Kori knew, she was being swept off of her feet, her back hitting the lockers behind her as Danse held her up by just her thighs. The Paladin smirked down at her as she gasped, and instinctively wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Her gaze shot up to his a moment later, an eyebrow quirked in pleasant surprise.

“What?” he asked. “Did you not think I had a dominant side?”

“No, it’s not that,” she muttered a bit sheepishly, “I just… didn’t think you were that strong.”

Ouch. That actually hurt. Danse didn’t let it show though, and instead decided to prove to Kori  _ physically  _ that he was stronger than she thought. He lifted her up a little, so that his cock slipped between her legs, before lowering her down so that just the tip rested against her hole. She grunted, and wriggled a little in his grasp, but Danse would not let her fall any lower. She looked up to him with a sweet grin, and batted her lashes.

“Come on… you know you want to,” she teased, letting her muscles flutter, promising and hot.

But Danse remained still, smirking down at the vault dweller as she tried to get what she wanted, and he shook his head. “I don’t know… I’m not certain if you really want it. You just don’t seem all that convincing to me.”

Kori looked genuinely offended, and she pouted playfully at him. “Awe, Danse, that’s not very nice. I let you cum… it’s my turn now, isn’t it?”

“Hmm… I don’t know… It doesn’t really  _ sound  _ like you want it.”

Now she actually appeared frustrated, and she set her lips in a straight line. “Danse, come on… just a little push… that’s all I need… that’s all  _ you  _ need…”

He just graced her with an unimpressed look. Her nails were starting to dig into his shoulder blades, but the pain was negligible. “You want it? Make me  _ believe  _ it.”

Finally, it dawned on her what he wanted-- something she had never graced him with before. Her face flushed dark red at the realization, which Danse took pride in all on its own.

Kori was not the begging type. That had been clearly established when they first had begun sleeping together. She was commanding, yes, but not  _ begging _ . Not towards him, at least. To Virgil, yes, to her companions, when they bickered, yes, but here, in the sanctity of his quarters? No. Not  _ yet _ .

She had not once begged for him. He intended to change that.

Even now, though, she was stubborn; she refused to make eye contact with Danse, biting her lip and staring down at the floor. Were he not currently focused on keeping her upright, he would have taken a hand and forced her to look at him.

“I’ve already cum,” he reminded her, and she cringed at the thought. “I’m more than fine with ending this right now. You know what I want, and I don’t think I’m asking for much.”

A low snarl started up in the back of Kori’s throat. Danse pinched her hind end just a little.

“Ask. Nicely.”

At the low command, he actually felt her involuntarily clench around nothing, some of her slick dribbling down the length of his dick.  _ Interesting _ . So interesting, that he almost missed the mumble of her voice.

“I’m sorry? I couldn’t hear you, Knight. If you want something from your  _ superior officer,  _ you’d better speak up. Loud and clear. I’ve got all day.”

“Fuck me,” she ground out, still looking down and away from Danse.

“You call yourself a soldier?” Danse sneered, fingernails digging into her skin just as hard as hers dug into his. “When you address a superior officer, you  _ look them in the eye _ , and you give them your request  _ respectfully _ .  _ Try again _ .”

“Fuck me,  _ please _ .” Her eyes  _ almost  _ made contact with his.

“I can’t  _ hear you _ .”

Finally, the dam broke. Kori looked directly into Danse’s umber gaze, biting her lip hard and  _ whining _ .

“God, Danse,  _ please _ , fuck me. I want it!”

A shudder of approval and appreciation ran through him, and he managed to mumble out a, “Yes, sir,” before thrusting in to the hilt instantly. Kori threw back her head and cried out, clinging to Danse like a lifeline, and the Paladin hissed through his teeth at the heat, the pressure, and the fluctuation of her muscles. He didn’t leave her wanting for long, starting up a quick, brutal pace that shook the lockers behind them.

Kori continued to whine and whimper, holding on to Danse tightly as he rocked her in his grasp. The sweet little noises she made were almost too much right off the get go, and Danse burrowed his face into her neck, panting against her skin.

“Oh, fuck, yes,  _ please _ ,” she gasped, trying to rock back down on him as he thrust. The grip of her thighs around him was near bruising, and he could feel her quivering.

Neither of them lasted long; Danse was still sensitive from having cum relatively untouched, and Kori from not having cum at all. Her cries fueled his arousal further, and he bucked up helplessly into her tight heat.

“Fuck, come on,” Danse snarled, panting open mouthed against her collarbone. “Say my name. Tell me who’s doing this to you.”

Kori’s breath came out in a quiet stutter, “D-Danse…”

“ _ Louder _ .” He bucked up particularly harshly, and she yelped.

“Danse, fuck!”

“Damn right,  _ again!  _ Say it again!”

She babbled his name helplessly, all the way up until she came hard, dripping around Danse’s cock. The Paladin growled, thrusting his way through his own orgasm moments later, filling her until his seed dripped out around his cock.

Kori cooed into Danse’s head, hands running through his hair and whispering sweet things as he pulled away from the lockers and stumbled back into bed with Kori still in his embrace. He towered over her, breathless as he pulled out and gathered his bearings.

“You good?” she finally asked at length, placing a hand on Danse’s shoulder.

He nodded, licking his lips and finally opening his eyes to stare down at her. “Yeah. I’m good. I’m good. You?”

“I think so…” She sat up, and Danse gave her the room to do so. “Yeah… a little sore, but that’s the be expected. That was… rough… but that’s just the way I like it.”

Danse took Kori’s place on the bed when she stood up, and watched her as she started gathering up her clothes. This was a normal occurrence after their meetings like this, but something felt off this time around. Danse couldn’t shake the feeling that Kori was holding back on something she wanted to say. He decided, after a moment’s contemplation, to address it.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

The vault dweller paused, before turning back to look at Danse, underwear back in place. She tilted her head to one side and offered a reassuring smile.

“Yeah. I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Danse rubbed his arm, glancing away. Kori sighed.

“... okay. Maybe… I’m a little nervous about tomorrow.”

“I absolutely don’t blame you.” Danse didn’t stand up from the bed; this was the part where Kori prepared to leave, no matter what. This wasn’t the time to offer comfort, or to ask her to stay (though he wouldn’t know why he would, he often argued with himself). “You’ve come such a long way in a short amount of time, so I can understand how you feel. All I can promise is that I’ll be by your side every step of the way.”

“Danse, you know you can’t come in with me.”

He made a gesture that translated to “Of course”, but regardless said, “You know what I mean. You’re not going to be alone. Not in spirit, at least.”

Kori hummed, and continued getting dressed. She really did look tense and nervous now that they weren’t in the heat of the moment anymore. Finally, Danse sighed, standing and breaking their unspoken rule about keeping distance from each other after their sessions. He placed a hand on her shoulder once her shirt was on, and turned her around slowly to face him.

“Listen,” Danse said, “I… you know I’m no good at these things, but… over the last five months, you’ve completely redefined yourself, from the moment you stepped out of Vault 111 and into a world you didn’t recognize, to when you saved me and my squad at the police station, to our venture into the Glowing Sea, and everything onwards. If you can adapt from pre-war life into all of this… I have little doubt in my mind that you’ll be able to manage the Institute just the same.”

Kori was silent, for a long moment, before she looked up into Danse’s eyes.

“... and if I can’t?”

The Paladin struggled to find words. It was uncharacteristic of Kori to be this unsure and doubtful of herself, and he struggled to find the words to offer her encouragement. And when he couldn’t find them at all, he simply pulled her in close, in a hug very uncharacteristic of his typically physically distant nature. A moment later, Kori wrapped her arms around his waist, shaking, but not crying.

Failure was something neither of them needed to consider.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle reminder to please _please_ leave comments! I don't care what they are, you could tell me to fuck off and I'd thank you.
> 
> Seriously.

The Radstorm that rolled in over the Boston Airport like a tidal wave didn’t stop or slow construction in the slightest. In fact, it only sped up work on the Molecular Relay. Elder Maxson himself flew down from the Prydwen to oversee progress on the machine, carefully stalking the movements of seemingly every soldier on the ground. He stuck especially close to Kori and Danse, often asking them questions about what they were doing, or about their journey into the Glowing Sea. Of course, they had to keep their answers vague, but the Elder didn’t push or shove for information they weren’t willing to give.

The first sparks of electricity crackled to life when the first wave of thunder washed through the Commonwealth. The Beam Emitter was lowered by crane onto the Stabilizer Platform, and because of the slots that had been created for this very purpose, only a few screws were all that was needed to keep it in place.

It was finished. All of the Brotherhood soldiers backed a respectful distance away, some leaving entirely to escape the Radstorm, but Danse, Kori, Maxson, and Ingram remained, despite the hellacious weather.

“This is it,” Kori muttered, staring into the arcs of electricity with wide eyes. Danse stared at her as the light reflected off of those orbs of green, then back to the behemoth of a device, then to Maxson, who stood as steadfast as ever, hands behind his back. But Danse had known the man long enough to know that he was in awe himself of the feat they had all accomplished today. Even Ingram was letting her normally carefully-guarded walls fall, and was gaping at the machine. She quickly recomposed herself, however, and walked over to Kori.

“Hey, listen,” she whispered, and she gestured towards the Elder, who was walking a respectable distance away from the teleporter, “Maxson’s wanting to talk to you, and I’m not throwing the switch until he gives us the go ahead.”

Kori nodded in understanding, and exchanged a glance with Danse before walking off. Danse folded his arms as he watched her walk away, and Ingram came to stand next to Danse. They stood in silence, for a bit, as they watched the two converse out of earshot, but soon, Ingram couldn’t keep quiet.

“We don’t know if this thing’s gonna work,” she sighed in defeated confession. “It’s anyone’s guess as to how things will go down once we throw the switch. For all we know, she won’t even make it past the platform, and we’ll all blow up.”

“That’s not an optimistic thought, Ingram.”

She gave Danse an unimpressed look. “You know I’m a realist, and the reality of this all is, I give it a ninety percent chance we lose her.”

That caused the Paladin to freeze up, and he stared off in Kori’s direction as the Radstorm blew over them. Did  _ she  _ know that risk? Those odds? If she did… was she really still willing to endanger herself for the sake of finding her son?

That was a silly question, he realized a moment later. She’d gone into the Glowing Sea without sufficient Radaway. She’d battled an Institute Courser and won, a feat unaccomplished by anyone before her. She risked the ire of the Brotherhood of Steel in working with the very people they swore to eradicate. If her chances were next to none of returning in using that teleporter, she would jump in and throw rocks at the switch if no one agreed to help pull it.

“Knight Farnsworth is aware of the risks,” Danse said, slow and measured. “If she feels like we have no other chance… this is how things will be. Hopefully, she’ll end up in the Institute, and she can further her mission,  _ and  _ ours.”

“Yeah. Hopefully.” Ingram scoffed, and turned back to the console, preparing machine for its sole purpose. “Just… if you have anything you need to say to her, you’d better do it when she’s done with Maxson. We’ll probably lose any and all contact once she’s inside.”

“Understood.”

“And Danse?”

He had begun to walk away, but her request for one last word stopped him.

“... If her son really is in there, and he’s okay… and she  _ makes  _ it in there… there’s a chance she might not come back from that, either.”

The thought was a sickening one, and Danse had to take a long, shuddering breath to compose himself, uncaring of the currently radiated air.

He and Kori met halfway, face to face. She had on that same steely expression he had only last seen when she was attempting to convince Maxson to let Danse wander the Commonwealth with her. Her hands were clasped behind her back, and though she could hide it to anyone else, Danse saw the intense fear and hesitation that she chose to run past.

“Listen to me closely, Knight,” he said, and he hated the cringe in her expression, but in front of the rest of the Brotherhood, there was no place for sentimentality or personal titles. “When you get inside the Institute, just do what you always do; follow your instincts. It’s what I taught you from day one.”

The vault dweller only smiled, but it felt empty to Danse. “I thought you taught me to never split up from your team.”

“Unfortunately, that can’t apply in this scenario. So I suppose I’m telling you now, follow your instincts, and do what’s right for the Commonwealth.”

They stared awkwardly, and the seconds ticked away, before Danse’s brain said to him, “fuck formality,” and he placed both of his hands on her shoulders-- the closest he could publicly get to a hug.

“Come back alive,” he begged of her softly, his heart a heavy, painful weight in his chest as he allowed his emotions to best him. “I-- I can’t express how much you and your friendship means to me. Ever since Cutler died, I--”

Kori held up a single finger, and Danse silenced himself at the motion.

“No matter what the Institute says to me--  _ if  _ they say anything-- they will  _ not  _ be my friends. That much, I can promise you. I am  _ not  _ going to let them talk me into staying, for whatever reason that may be. I won’t fall victim to the Institute the way Cutler did to those Super Mutants, whether through violence, or coercion. That, I can promise.”

She bit her lip.

“Promising to come back alive, or in one piece… without any idea what I’m really going to face… I don’t know if that’s a promise I can make. Just take comfort in knowing I’m going to uphold the Brotherhood’s standards every second I’m in there.”

Danse frowned, inhaling sharply. For Kori to be uncertain about her fate was not a good sign. She was always so cocksure, so confident, and now when the end of her journey was so close, for her to behave this way now..?

It hurt him. It hurt Danse, so much. He wanted, in that moment, to beg her to stay, to put it off, ‘ _ We can find another way. It doesn’t have to be like this, it’s not too late to turn back. _ ’ Because after all these years of isolating himself, all these years of never bonding with someone the way he bonded with Cutler… he didn’t know if his heart could handle the strain of losing another friend.

“Kori, listen, I…” Danse’s jaw waggled for a moment, before he set his lips and sighed through his nose, the noise muted beneath the roaring wind of the Radstorm. “Kori, I just want you to know, before you go in there, I… care… about you… so deeply. I just-- I  _ need  _ you to be safe.”

He looked around nervously.

“Nick needs you to be safe, Cait, Deacon, MacCready-- they all-- I can’t be the bearer of bad news. We all…”

Past that point, words failed him. His breath caught in his throat, and Kori gave him her trademark reassuring smile. The same smile she’d shot him as she whacked a Feral Ghoul across the head when she dove headfirst into the Cambridge police station. The same smile she’d given him at Arcjet, when they were swarmed by Synths. The same smile she gave when she first solicited him, when she convinced Maxson to let Danse travel with her, the same smile when she was dying of radiation poisoning… Kori’s smile.

“Have a Nuka Cola ready for me when I get back,” was all she said, before patting him on the shoulder and walking past him with only a single hesitant stutter in her step. She stepped up onto the platform without any prompting from Ingram, and the Brotherhood woman got to work immediately.

“Relay’s dialed in, beam emitter’s warmed up… everything looks green. Let me start scanning for the signal!” she shouted over the rising wind. “Cross your fingers; I’m inputting the code now…”

The four of them-- Danse, Ingram, Maxson, Kori-- all waited with baited breath, before the mechanic snarled. “Wow. There’s a heck of a lot of interference and ghosting. It’s going to take a minute or two to lock in.”

She stepped away from the console, and approached the Molecular Relay with a hand extended. “By the way, this little trip you’re taking is a heck of an opportunity to find out as much as we can about the Institute and what they’re up to. I put a clever little program on this holotape that’ll scan their network and download anything it finds. If you place it in any terminal down there, it’ll do the rest. Bring it back to me and I’ll see if I can make sense of whatever it found.”

When Kori took a hold of the holotape, a light went from red to green on the console. Ingram turned heel and rushed back excitedly.

“Well well… looks like we have a winner. RF wave capture complete!”

The vault dweller shot a smile Danse’s direction. A part of him wanted to scream.

Something about this felt  _ so wrong _ .

“Ramping the emitter! 60 percent… 80 percent..!”

As the numbers ticked up, Kori’s smile fell quickly, and she glanced around as the arcs of electricity multiplied exponentially.

‘ _ Fuck, get out! _ ’ Danse wanted to shout. He wanted to dart in, to tackle her out of the way, let them teleport goddamn air for all he cared. Every part of him strained against his will not to do it. Kori would never forgive him for interfering.

“Emitter’s spiking, but steady. All that’s left is to throw the transmit switch!”

She turned around to look towards Kori, her hand on the switch.

“Transmitting in three…”

Kori took a doubtful step towards Danse, and Danse did the same towards her.

“Two..!”

“Danse, I’m sorry, there’s something I’ve --”

“One!”

“-- been meaning to tell you, just know that I--”

“Stay safe, soldier!”

Danse finally found his voice. “No, no wait,  _ wait! _ ”

Before he could be heard, before he could intervene in any way, there was a lightning strike-- a bright, thunderous flash of blue, right where Kori was standing. The force of it knocked Danse back several feet, and his head hit the ground hard. Then, there was nothing but dots in his eyes, and ringing in his ears.

The Paladin shook his head, squinting up into the irradiated sky. As the spots cleared away, he saw Arthur hovering over him, shouting, it looked like, but Danse still couldn’t hear. The man placed a hand on Danse’s chest, snapping his fingers in each of his ears.

“I-- I can see you,” Danse managed to grind out, the mere act of speaking enough to make his head ache and throb. “I can’t… hear yet… give me a second…”

He tried to sit up, but Maxson pushed him back down, worry obvious in the way he spoke and looked at Danse, but he overall seemed relieved that at  _ least  _ the Paladin seemed to have his senses. He kept his hand planted firmly on his chest, preventing him from sitting up again, but Danse didn’t fight him.

Eventually, his hearing finally returned, distant and tinny as it may have been, and only then did Maxson allow him to sit up, with much assistance. When Danse finally caught sight of the Molecular Relay, everything stopped.

The device had been completely and utterly  _ demolished _ . Every inch of metal was charred black. The console had blown out, and Ingram was nursing a head wound of her own, clearly not as severe as Danse’s. The satellite, even, was bent and charred, wilted like a dying flower. There was nothing left on the platform where Kori had once stood. Not even burn marks from where her feet had shielded the ground from the blast. Danse rushed towards it after escaping Elder Maxson’s grasp, in vain, arms outstretched in search of something that just simply wasn’t there. Panicked, he turned to Ingram.

“Is she in? Did it work?”

The mechanist gave Danse her most apologetic look, though she even looked startled from Danse’s sudden outburst. “I’m… sorry, Danse. Past this point… we’re blind. It’s… all up to her now. If she isn’t molecular soup.”

The Paladin hissed through his teeth, clenching his fists as he stared down at the platform. A moment later, there was a hand at his back, gently but firmly guiding him away.

“Come on, Soldier,” Elder Maxson urged him. “This Radstorm isn’t going to let up soon; we’ve already taken on more rads than regulation permits. I’ll get you a drink. We’ll talk about this.

“That was my  _ soldier _ ,” Danse seethed, but Arthur cut him off.

“And  _ you  _ are mine, and  _ you  _ are my current priority. We’re going to get you taken care of, make certain you haven’t gotten a concussion, or worse. With Knight Farnsworth’s well being out of our control, all we can do now is take care of ourselves. I’m asking you to stand down, Danse. Please.”

Every part of him wanted to argue.  _ Every  _ part of him wanted to rebuild that damn machine, and rush headfirst into the Institute himself. But he knew that that was foolish, and likely pointless. With a sigh of resignation, Danse offered his old friend a meager nod, and allowed him to guide him back into the airport. Ingram, as well, offered a firm slap on the back.

With Kori’s fate uncertain, and her chances seemingly diminished now that the Signal Interceptor was destroyed, all that was left to do was wait.

 

* * *

 

The first day Kori was gone, Danse busied himself with long overdue repairs to his Power Armor, and that was all he dedicated himself to the first day. A majority of that time was actually spent on a quest for grease for the left shoulder of the armor, but it was something to take his mind off of the vault dweller’s absence.

The second day Kori was gone, Danse spent on the ground at the airport. Mostly for firing practice, but also to help keep an eye on the deconstruction of the Molecular Relay with some other Scribes and Knights. There were still valuable parts that had remained undamaged, and they would go towards future projects if they were successfully salvaged.

The fifth day Kori was gone, Danse escorted a Scribe mission into a nearby manufacturing plant, keeping the archivists safe as they gathered pre-war technical documents. It was the best distraction he would have all week, especially when they were all ambushed by Raiders from one side, and Gunners from the other. With the Paladin’s aid, there were serious injuries, but no casualties. Again, Arthur would treat him to a drink to commend his success; a common activity the Elder liked to participate in. Danse knew it was really just an excuse the man made for the two of them to speak casually, but he certainly wasn’t complaining for the excuse to get buzzed.

By the eighth day, he was growing restless and anxious. There was no word of the vault dweller out of time, no rumors from bustling cities like Goodneighbor or Diamond City, and the Brotherhood had ears nearly everywhere. The lack of info on Kori’s whereabouts or activity was unnerving, and Danse found himself itching for a cigarette, a habit he had long ago kicked to the curb.

As he stood on the flight deck of the Prydwen, he surveyed the Commonwealth in the distance, hoping,  _ praying,  _ that if Kori was out there, still alive, that she was safe, at the very least. He was hoping, most of all, that she wasn’t even in the Institute anymore, but a part of that was also what frightened him most. Because if she wasn’t in the Institute anymore and no one had heard anything from her… chances were, she had left the Commonwealth.

Danse closed his eyes, and recollected the conversation they had had the night before they approached the Glowing Sea.

“ _ If you could go  _ anywhere  _ in the world… where would you go, Danse? _ ”

Danse leaned back from the fire they’d made, in the run down house they’d taken shelter in for the night. He scratched his chin in thought.

“I’m… not sure. I’ve only thought about going wherever the Brotherhood was. They’re almost all I’ve ever really known where I wasn’t alone, and I don’t want to travel where I don’t know if I’ll be in good company.”

Kori sat across from him, thoughtful expression hard in the firelight, and the embers that flew up out of the heat made her eyes seem to glitter. She took a bite out of her cooked squirrel meat before offering up her own response.

“Well, that makes one of us. Because if I were to go someplace out of the Commonwealth… I’d go to the middle of nowhere. Build up a nice metal shack to keep the wind and rain off my back, with enough room for me and Shaun… and we’d stay there.”

The Paladin frowned. “That doesn’t sound strategically advantageous. Without any outside help, there’s a high likelihood that you’ll perish from illness or famine. Not to mention, if you want your son to have the best life possible out here, it would be wise to instead select a highly populated area, where there’s a better chance that he’ll be surrounded by children his age, and all the necessities he may require.”

Kori frowned, but overall seemed to ignore his statement. “I have a dog, back at the place I’m living. I hope Shaun’s not allergic… his dad always had terrible allergies.”

Danse knew, better than most, that allergies in this day and age, of any level of severity, was a serious threat, and diminished your chances of survival in the Wasteland. Cutler had had asthma-- nothing serious that needed medication, but it was an inhibitor on his true potential, and could very well have been what cost him his humanity, in the end.

“So  _ will _ you leave the Commonwealth when you find your son?” Danse inquired.

Kori hummed, her lips set in a straight line as she stared into the flames. “... I don’t know yet. I don’t know… this place… it holds too many memories. Things I couldn’t possibly relive. Shaun doesn’t deserve a mother who only feels regret at everything she sees around them.”

_ Everything?  _ It couldn’t possibly be  _ everything _ .

“The Brotherhood has more than enough room to take in both you and Shaun, and Maxson has a fondness for children, believe it or not.”

Then, the vault dweller’s gaze was hard. “The last thing my boy needs is to grow up thinking all his life is good for is war. He’ll be subjected to enough of that just living out here in general; I don’t need the Brotherhood making him think he’s meant to be a martyr.”

Danse remembered exactly how he had recoiled at the harsh way Kori had made her statement, and just the thought of that seemed to catapult him back into the present. He cringed at nothing but the echo of her words:

“ _ I don’t need the Brotherhood making him think he’s meant to be a martyr. _ ”

“Paladin?”

Danse averted his gaze from the distant Commonwealth, and turned to salute the Elder half-heartedly. Arthur waved for him to be at ease, and Danse slumped against the railing dejectedly.

“I’m worried about you, soldier.” Maxson confessed as he took his place next to Danse.

“I know, but it’s unnecessary,” Danse said. “It’s my own fault; I can pull myself out of this, with enough effort, but I currently don’t have the will or energy to do so. It’s not my intent to be a weight on the Brotherhood, and I don’t intend to--”

He stopped when he heard the Elder sigh, long and slow and exasperated.

“Danse… while your dedication and loyalty is  _ always  _ a pleasure… sometimes, it’s more advantageous to consider your own needs. What is it that  _ you _ want, more than anything currently? Not the Brotherhood,  _ you _ .”

The Paladin blinked. “I… thought it would be obvious. I’m hoping for Knight Farnsworth’s safe and successful return from her infiltration of the Institute. I’m hoping she will find her son, so that we can get her help in commencement with rebuilding Liberty Prime.”

Maxson hummed with interest. “Have you told her about the project?”

“No, sir; I’ve kept my lips firmly sealed about any and all information towards it, even hints. Just as you ordered. Besides, there really was no reason to bring it up.”

“Which is good. I would have thought, given how close you and Knight Farnsworth had become, that maybe you would have entrusted her with our plans.”

“I wouldn’t potentially jeopardize our mission like that,” he promised, looking to Arthur in complete seriousness. Then, he paused. “You… believe we are close?”

“I have no doubt in my mind.” The Elder smiled, though it seemed to be lacking warmth. “After all, you spent a considerable amount of time with her during your venture into the Glowing Sea, I’m sure, and whatever else may have also transpired during that week where you were gone. It’s also apparent in your worry for her. Tell me, Danse… has Knight Farnsworth become a distraction?”

That caused the Paladin to stand up straighter. “I’m… sorry, sir?”

Arthur took a deep breath. “You seem to harbor the same protective nature over her that you did for Cutler; even if I wasn’t Elder when you initially joined the Brotherhood, I am well aware of how his death affected you. I feel like I’m seeing a repeat of the past, Danse; you’re teetering on the edge of being catatonic with worry or depression. And not as Elder, but as your friend… I’m very concerned about your well being. So I will ask again-- has Knight Farnsworth become a distraction to you?”

Inwardly, Danse cringed. When Arthur asked questions like that, he usually had a way of not so much making people disappear, but rather, he had a way of splitting soldiers up in a way that usually ended up in one or the other either resigning from dissatisfaction with their new duties, or dying in the line of duty. He knew that Arthur meant well, but when it came to splitting up soldiers, he more often than not took it to an extreme. Danse couldn’t fault him; he wanted every soldier under his command performing at their peak, and he was young-- he was dealing with these issues the only way he knew how.

But, again, Danse knew Arthur meant well, especially towards him, of all people. So he stood up straighter, and shook his head.

“Negative, sir. Like I said, I’m worried about Knight Farnsworth’s well being, but it is not a distraction. I’m still fully capable of carrying out your orders as you see fit. It’s a weight on my mind, of course I will admit, but not enough to render me unfit for duty. I will persevere.”

Seemingly satisfied with that reply, Elder Maxson nodded, and patted a hand on Danse’s back. “Very good. Perhaps a proper distraction is in order. I’ve been meaning to get off of the Prydwen for some time, now, and I’m itching to get my hands on a weapon. Why don’t we take a day’s leave and hunt for something nasty to kill?”

That idea  _ did  _ sound appealing; it’d been quite some time since he and Arthur had really had any bonding time where they didn’t need to use the excuse that they were talking about the future of the Brotherhood, or further plans to proceed with the war against the Institute. Just as Danse was about to give his agreement to the plan, a Squire bolted out from the door to the command deck, nearly tripping at the bottom of the stairs.

“Squire!” Maxson barked, “watch your step! Caution above celerity.”

The young boy didn’t seem to have heard the Elder’s brief lesson, and he stumbled to a halt before both Maxson and Danse. “Sirs! Sirs! It’s-- it’s Knight Farnsworth! She’s on approach to the airport! B-but, but--”

Danse didn’t even wait to hear for the rest of what the Squire had to say; he was bolting towards the Vertibird that transported trooped from the Prydwen to the ground, and after a moment to piece together the situation, Arthur darted right after him, leaving the poor young boy in the dust.

“Take us down,” Danse commanded the pilot, and with a quick nod, the pilot prepared for takeoff. Arthur placed a hand on Danse’s shoulder as he hopped into the Vertibird alongside him, urging the Paladin to look at him.

“Be cautious,” he warned Danse, and he narrowed his eyes when Danse shot him a dirty look. “Knight Farnsworth has been off our radar for a week now. Anything could have happened, and the way that Squire bolted up to us… if you would have  _ waited  _ for him to finish speaking, I’m sure we would have more info on the current situation. But the way that Squire rushed up to us implies that something about this return may not be as joyous as you’re hoping.”

“Kori is a strong, capable woman,” Danse bit back, and his tone surprised even himself, but he didn’t stop. “I highly doubt the Institute gave her much trouble. Who knows? Maybe the both of us will get to meet her son, Shaun. Maybe that’s what had the Squire so worked up.”

The Elder ‘hmphed’, but gave no indication of agreement or disagreement.

The Vertibird hadn’t even touched down fully when Danse jumped off, followed close behind by Elder Maxson. The two of them rushed through the hangar halls, then made the sharp right outside, and then stopped short at the sight that greeted them.

Danse’s heart plummeted into his stomach.

Kori was alive.  _ Kori was alive.  _ Kori was… 

… Kori was wearing an Institute lab coat. Clean. Pristine.  _ New,  _ with  _ her  _ name embroidered on the left side.

Two Brotherhood Knights had their weapons pointed at her, and upon seeing this, Maxson shouted at them, commanding them with a sharp bark to back down, that this was one of their own, but most of the words were lost on Danse. His blood was rushing through his ears.

Kori had her  _ own  _ Institute lab coat. Kori looked… Kori looked…

“You didn’t find Shaun,” Danse heard himself say, but it didn’t sound like his voice. He stepped towards her, and Kori flinched.  _ Kori flinched at him _ . She wasn’t making eye contact with anyone, simply standing there in her perfect lab coat, in her perfectly groomed hair and skin, spotless and… empty.

“Knight,” Maxson spoke up, approaching her as well, and Danse was horrified to see that the Elder had his hand behind his back, resting on the handle of his pistol, “what happened in there?”

“ _ Arthur, _ ” Danse hissed, smacking his hand away from behind his back.

Kori finally exhaled, and it was a weak, shuddering sound.

“... I found him.”

Everyone remained silent. The tone of her voice was enough for everyone present to understand that there was a “but” statement coming.

“... the Institute is run by a man they call Father… a sixty year old man, who views himself and the Institute as humanity’s savior…”

She choked up on her words, but charged through regardless.

“... and  _ he _ is my son.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What's this? A late night upload?!!?!? Wild!
> 
> Though there is heavy content in this chapter! **Warning for attempted suicide and graphic imagery!!!!**

Once aboard the Prydwen, Kori explained everything to Maxson, Danse, and Ingram, all of them gathered in the Brotherhood leader’s quarters; how Kori had been separated from her baby for not ten years, but sixty, how literally _everyone_ in the Institute had been anticipating her arrival, how they treated her like the mother of a god. The Institute was _filled_ with both humans and Synths of every generation, and they lived in relative harmony, though the Synths were more like a slave class than anything else. Everyone knew her name. Everyone offered her anything and everything she could have wanted. It was clean, pristine. Advanced. Far, far more advanced than any of them could have anticipated, even _with_ the knowledge of their Synth program.

The vault dweller took a long, slow, suffering drink. Ingram and Danse both sat awkwardly by. The Elder was clenching his jaw.

Everyone was healthy. Everyone was nearly radiation free. They were developing great things-- medicines, prosthetics, a consistent food source that could be grown virtually anywhere. They had clean, running water, schools-- they were almost completely and entirely self-sustained…

And Shaun wanted Kori to be a part of it. She had a room. She would take control of the Institute after his passing. She could be a part of something great, he had said.

She downed more of the bottle of whiskey in her hands miserably, while the Brotherhood members sat in silence. Digesting everything she had told them. It was Kori who eventually broke the silence, slapping down a holotape on the table and sliding it towards Ingram.

“Oh. Yeah. And here’s that. And Li’s coming back, so got _that_ squared away for you, Maxson.”

Ingram accepted the tape with a quiet thank you. Maxson nodded his approval, still clenching his jaw.

“I’ll… get this holotape to Proctor Quinlan,” the ship’s mechanic said, quietly excusing herself from the small gathering.

She closed the door softly behind her, and that was when Maxson snapped. He slammed the palms of his hands down on the table, standing abruptly and pacing in the small space allotted.

“This situation is far worse than we initially predicted. If the Institute truly is as advanced as you say, there’s a possibility that our greatest weapons will hardly put a dent into their defenses. If that really is the case, we have to commence with our plans _now_. Knight, how cooperative do you think Li will be?”

Danse attempted to butt in, to tell Arthur that now _obviously_ wasn’t the time-- Kori was badly shaken and needed time to process everything-- but the vault dweller spoke up before him.

“I convinced her the Institute’s the enemy, not the Brotherhood.”

“Well done, Knight.” Maxson snatched up his own bottle and took a quick swig of the alcohol within. “As soon as she arrives, we’ll interrogate her aboard the Prydwen. She’s been under the Institute’s influence for the last decade, and we can’t afford to take any chances.”

At his last statement, he narrowed his eyes down at Kori suspiciously. She hardly noticed, and Danse himself gave Maxson a glare of his own, before the Elder backed away.

“Now. Onto other matters. Thanks to the… debatable success of your reconnaissance efforts, it’s time to advance our operations to the next phase.”

Under normal circumstance, Danse would be all for furthering the Brotherhood agenda. But this… nothing about this was normal. A vault dweller 200 years out of her time, who had had her husband shot and her baby stolen right in front of her eyes, who was then forced to embrace the ethics of a new world she didn’t understand, who found herself becoming a soldier in order to find comfort and aid in people who would have her back, who traversed through miles of irradiated wasteland, killed what was thought unkillable, built the impossible, only to find that her child was the leader of the very institution the whole Commonwealth was depending on her to destroy…

Danse felt his chest tighten with concern. With empathy. Kori had lost _everyone_ that she held close. _Everyone_. And Danse could feel his own breath quicken at the recollection when he himself had suffered the same unfortunate circumstance. When he had no one left. When he locked himself away from everyone, wondering what the point of it all was supposed to be when you could lose everything you cared about so easily.

Kori did not need work. Kori needed rest. Kori needed _help_.

“With all due respect, Elder,” Danse cut in, “judging from Knight Farnsworth’s current behavior, I would estimate that she departed from the Institute not long before coming here, maybe a day, maybe only hours ago. It seems to me that she needs a break before charging back onto the front lines.”

“We don’t have the luxury of time on our side anymore,” Arthur seethed, and he placed his palms flat on the table again. Kori, who was next to him, flinched away at the motion. “The Institute has been infiltrated, and regardless of whether it was someone they welcomed with open arms or not, I have no doubt, as a leader, that the Institute has plans of their own. Knight Farnsworth’s arrival likely served as a catalyst for them to further their own agenda. If they do not sleep, neither do we.”

“Sir,” Danse bit, standing up, “you’re placing far too much responsibility on one person’s shoulders. I’m telling you, Kori needs time to gather her senses--”

“Is this a personal matter, Danse? You’ve moved on to first names; am I next?”

The Paladin sputtered, “N-no, sir, of course not. I simply believe, for the state of her mental well being, Kor-- Knight Farnsworth needs time to recover. Regardless of the physical burdens lifted from her shoulders during her time in the Institute, it’s clear that she has been severely mentally taxed, likely as a result of the revelation that her son is not who she thought he was. Further strain could prove disastrous to her mental health.”

Maxson growled, turning away from the both of them with a flurry of his coat. He regarded his bottle of whiskey carefully, before sighing and tilting his head back.

“You will receive five day’s leave, Knight, under Paladin Danse’s supervision. You have access to two Vertibird trips-- one to any location you desire, and a second for a return trip. Understood?”

Kori nodded; a motion the Elder didn’t see, nor seemed to care about.

“Dismissed, Knight,” he grunted, gesturing towards the door with his bottle before taking another drink.

Kori stood up abruptly, hastily, marching out of the room with her head high, higher than a truly confident woman would have it. Danse rushed to follow--

“I did not say _you_ were dismissed,” the Elder growled.

Reluctantly, Danse stopped in the doorframe.

“Close the door, Danse.”

Again, reluctantly, Danse complied. He turned back around to face Arthur, arms folded and wearing an impatient expression. The Elder approached slowly.

“You said to me that Knight Farnsworth wasn’t a distraction.”

“She’s _not_. She’s been subjected to serious mental turmoil, and as her sponsor, it is my duty to ensure that she’s at peak performance levels before heading out--”

“How long have you two been on a first name basis?”

Danse struggled to find his words. “Erroneously, I referred to her as ‘Initiate Kori’ when she was first joining my squadron, so technically, it’s always been first name basis. If you’re referring to a more personal level, that occurred sometime during the week I was away with her in the Glowing Sea, and elsewhere in the Commonwealth.”

Arthur stared daggers into Danse.

“And what _does_ she mean to you, Paladin?”

Again, Danse’s words became caught in his throat. His mouth flapped uselessly as he pondered, tried to come up with an answer that the Elder would want to hear… and failed.

“... I don’t know,” he told the man honestly. “I truly don’t know.”

As difficult as it was, Danse remained steadfast. He held himself high, even as the Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel stared him down. Every part of him feared that this was it; that Arthur would separate them, permanently. They would have no time, no excuse, to see each other again. The thought of that idea scaring him scared Danse more than the idea itself, because why did he care so deeply about what happened to Kori? If she wasn’t under his protection anymore, surely, it didn’t matter? He could return to his duties, without worry of being responsible for someone else’s life.

Why did the thought of losing Kori make him so nauseous?

“I said, _dismissed,_ Paladin.”

Danse shook himself from his startled musings, and quickly left the room without regarding the Elder further.

The moment he left the Elder’s quarters, he only had a singular goal in mind: Find Kori, and get her off of the ship.

He knew she wouldn’t have gone to his quarters-- entering was too risky in broad daylight. Her emotional state also dictated that she probably wouldn’t want to be around people, so really, that only left the Forecastle. Danse headed directly there immediately, ignoring anyone that called his name or offered salutations. He was to get Kori, and get off the ship, away from Maxson.

By the time he reached the door to the Forecastle, he found the door slightly ajar, signifying that yes, someone _had_ been this way recently. He pushed the door open gently, heading out without hesitation, but he came to a full stop at the sight that greeted him.

Kori was there, yes, but not on the walkway. She was at the very, very end of the Forecastle… standing on the wrong side of the railing. Facing outwards, her hands clutching the bars behind her.

‘ _Oh my God,_ ’ was the only coherent thought Danse could piece together at the sight, for a moment, and then it was, ‘ _Oh my God it’s so much worse than I thought. Don't do it._ ’

Slowly, Danse closed the door behind him, having to hold tight so the wind didn’t snap it shut. He knelt down, silently, and worked quickly to take off his shoes. Less sound meant that he could get closer to Kori. When his shoes were completely removed, he stood up straight, arms extended.

“Kori… what are you doing…”

Her head perked up at the sound of his voice, and she turned her head just the slightest bit. Just to hear him better. Then, she looked down towards the ground.

“... do you know how long it would take me to get from here, to down there, if I let go of the railing? I did the math; I know the answer. Do you?”

Danse clenched his jaw, and started inching his way towards Kori, his movement nearly silent without his shoes.

“... about five seconds, from 400 feet at least,” he replied. “Most Brotherhood soldiers learned that before the Prydwen left the Capital Wasteland.”

“Yeah. Five seconds.”

The vault dweller paused.

“Of course, my chance of survival depends on what I do with my body on the way down. Best way is to shoot head first, arms at both sides, like a bullet. Worst way, and I’d probably live with horrible consequences, is arms out, legs out, belly first, hope my ribs protect all those important organs, hope my skull’s thick enough to keep my brain inside.”

The thought was a grim and morbid one. “Have you thought a lot about this?” Danse asked, swallowing thickly.

“Almost every day since I left the vault,” she announced. She almost sounded _proud_. Danse wanted to throw up. “I’d never use a gun, though. Too unpredictable. And I’m not the kind of person to just lay down and take it. I never have been. So Raiders were out of the question. If it were to happen, it’d have to be a split second decision. Something that didn’t need much preparing. Something like… this.”

Danse willed his voice not to shake. “So why are you standing there now?”

Kori barked out a bitter laugh. “Because I found my goddamn son. After all this time, I finally found him… and everyone I know wants him dead.”

She tilted back her head, towards the sky, and shook it gently.

“Fuck, Danse… one year, or ten years, or sixty, at the end of the day, that is _still_ my goddamn baby. That is still _my boy_ , who I would have died for just to make sure he was safe, safe and happy and healthy, and after all this _fucking_ time… I found out he just…”

She shook her head. Her voice broke.

“He’s spent his _whole life_ without me. When he looked at me when he first walked into the room… he just… he _knew_ who I was, but… there was no warmth. There was no love, or excitement. There was just this… cold, calculating curiosity. All this time, I spent searching for my little boy… and he doesn’t even want to bother to get to know me. He doesn’t see me as his mother… I’m just… a _specimen_ . Something to be studied. To be _trained_ to take on the burden of leadership. He gave me a hello, and told me about himself, and then sent me on a fucking self-guided field trip. And that was it.”

One of her hands let go of the railing, and Danse had to stop himself from darting forwards out of panic.

“Finding Shaun was all I had left. Saving my boy, the last of my family, was the _only_ reason I had left to be here. And I’ve done it. I found him, and for what? A congratulatory pat on the back? He doesn’t _understand_ the harm his people are doing! Without Shaun… without Gabriel, I-- I have nothing left to hold on to.”

Danse’s own voice cracked. “Damn it, Kori, _I’m_ still here!”

The wind howled around them. Danse shook as he spoke.

“I’m still here. Nick, Deacon, MacCready, Cait-- doesn’t our friendship mean _anything_ to you?”

Kori stammered for a moment.

“You were a means to an end,” the vault dweller snapped, and something in Danse’s heart did the same. “I don’t… I _don’t_ care about… _any_ of you. I… I did what I had to, to stay alive… for Shaun. And if that meant making friends, that’s what I did. If that meant making allies who could further help me in my mission… that’s what I did.”

“I _know_ that’s not true,” the Paladin argued, taking another step closer. She was trying to push him away. To make him frustrated; the oldest trick in the book. He was _not_ going to fall victim to that. “It _can’t_ be. Not after everything we’ve been through. I speak from experience when I _know_ that there’s no possible way you don’t see me as a friend, or at _least_ someone you trust.”

“What happens to me shouldn’t matter to you,” Kori barked. “You have the Brotherhood, and I’ve done as they’ve asked. Nick has his detective agency, Piper her paper, I got Mac his kid’s cure… and my reward was a shot in the fucking stomach. _Why_ do you care about what happens to me?”

Danse squashed down the true answer-- the one even he refused to believe, He supplied something else in its place, something equally true.

“Because I’ve been where you are, Kori.” Danse approached further. “When Cutler died, I didn’t see the point in anything. I didn’t know what purpose I had, in a world where no one gave a damn about me. It nearly cost me my life, in the same way that you’re threatening your own now. If I were in the same situation then, or the one you’re in now, I’d trust you with my life, and I assure you: that trust doesn’t come easy.”

Finally, Kori turned her head to look back at Danse. Her eyes were wide, tears streaming freely down her face.

“I care about what happens to you, because someone cared about what happened to me. Before Maxson was made Elder, he was there for me, when I had no one else. He wasn't my friend, and yet he extended his aid in my darkest hour. I almost starved myself to death from how despondent I became after I lost Cutler. And when I got the help I needed… I recovered. I became stronger. The loss still remains as a scar over my heart, but I’m still here, and this heart is still beating. And I _know_ you’re capable of the same. There’s still hope for something good to come out of all this mess.”

“Maybe you can find hope,” Kori bit weakly. “I can respect that. But you grew up in this desolate shithole. This is all the norm for you. But do you have _any_ idea how _hopeless_ I felt when I first came out of the vault and I saw that everything was _dead_ ? Danse… I grew up surrounded by green. Green trees. Green grass. There were flowers, there was _color_ . The wind didn’t always smell like ash, or like something had died in it. There weren’t dangerous creatures or people lurking around every _fucking_ corner. The sky was _blue_. Look around us, Danse.”

She gestured to everything within sight.

“ _None_ of that old life is left. _None_ of it. I know these buildings, I know this landscape, but this is _not_ the great Commonwealth I once called home. And without my family to help me pick up the pieces…”

She bit back a sob.

“... There’s no one left who understands me.”

The Paladin froze, just a few feet away from Kori. Almost arm’s distance now. He wracked his brain for a comeback, for a response, _anything_ , but in the end, he fell short. He stood up straighter, and sighed.

“Yeah. You’re right.”

Shocked at the agreement, Kori whipped her head back around.

“You’re right. I won’t understand. I’m not refusing to, I just… _can’t_. Not with my current experience and position. You’re absolutely right no one understands what you’re going through. And I’m sorry. No one should have to go through that.”

He looked up into her eyes, but his confidence didn’t waver when she averted her gaze from his. “But the simple fact of the matter is that you _did_ go through these things, these horrible, terrible, near _unspeakable_ things. And it’s all so damn _tragic_ and heartbreaking, and _no one_ will understand your pain better than you. But while only you can feel _your_ sorrow… you don’t have to pick up the pieces alone. Even if it’s not with Gabriel or Shaun… you _don’t_ have to do this alone. I’m here. MacCready is here. All of your friends… I’m sure that if you explained the situation to them, they would do what’s in their power to help you cope with the situation. I know that, if you give me the chance, I’ll do _everything_ in my power to help numb the pain.”

Slowly, very slowly, Danse extended his hand.

“The world is a dark and horrible place; I know this better than most people. I know that anything could be torn away from you at any moment. I _don’t_ want you to be one of those things I lose.”

The vault dweller’s gaze flicked from Danse’s hand, to his face, back and forth.

“But in loss… we find strength. We find who our true friends are… and we find ourselves. And I am _begging_ you to trust me, and to come back over the railing and off this ship the sane way.”

Kori stared at Danse’s hand, before frowning and turning away. He wasn’t giving up yet.

“We’ll go wherever you want. I’ll walk in shoes filled with glass in Goodneighbor if that’s what will get you to step away from the edge. After everything we’ve faced together, I don’t want you to think you have to fight this battle alone. I wouldn’t have won my own battle if Maxson hadn’t given me encouragement and reinforcement. Please, Kori.”

Still, there was no response. Danse sighed.

“There are better ways to get high than on a blimp.”

Still nothing. But… only for a second. Then there was a snort, and a laugh.

“Did you… did you seriously just make a drug joke?” The vault dweller stared at Danse over her shoulder, and Danse offered up a nervous smirk. “That wasn’t even related to the situation at hand.”

“I know,” he laughed anxiously. “I’m sorry. I’m just… I’m worried about you, and you know I’m not very good at vocalizing my thoughts. I’m just trying to do what it takes to--”

‘ _To get you back in my arms._ ’ Danse blinked, on a thought.

“A few months before you found us,” he spoke up suddenly, “one of my men was shot multiple times by Raiders. Scribe Haylen stayed by that Knight’s side for two days straight without sleep, fighting to keep him alive… but he was on a slow decline. I decided that his suffering needed to end, and ordered Haylen to administer an overdose of painkillers so he could die with dignity. Even though I’m _certain_ she wanted to continue fighting for that Knight’s life, she injected him without question.”

Kori was confused-- confused enough that, slowly, she turned around from her outwards position, back towards Danse to listen to him speak. “How is this supposed to help either of us? I don’t think a conversation on the morals of lethal injection--”

“The decision whether or not to ease that soldier’s suffering isn’t the point here. The point is what happened later that same evening.”

Kori slumped back down.

“Haylen approached me while I was on watch. She didn’t say a word, but I could tell something was wrong. After what felt like an eternity, she collapsed into my arms, crying. I… didn’t know what to do, so I just held her for a while. A few minutes later, she stopped, kissed me on the cheek, and simply said, ‘thank you,’ before heading back into the police station.”

Danse closed his eyes at the recollection of that particular memory.

“I think I pushed Haylen too hard. I pushed her to do something her instincts told her was wrong, and I’m always so afraid of pushing people away from me. I’m _always_ afraid of making the wrong decisions, and having to live with those decisions forever. But Haylen has _always_ been a close friend of mine. She always will be. And even when I make mistakes, more often than not, I’m forgiven, because I’m only human. Being human comes with the condition that you have to learn to trust people, and trust in the good in them. But, even with the short timespan in which we’ve known each other, I will _never_ trust anyone more than I trust you, Kori. I will _never_ leave you in the dust because of a burden that has weighed on your shoulders, of a mistake you made, because as your friend, it just wouldn’t be right of me.”

He spread out his arms in offering. “I don’t know what our dynamic has evolved into, but it’s not as black and white as soldier and sponsor, or even as dom and sub anymore. Things are more complex now than ever, but all I want you to know is… like I did with Haylen, I’ll be here to hold you if you ever need it. Please… whatever pain you’re experiencing, whatever burden on your shoulders… let me take at least _some_ of that weight for you. Let me in. Let me help.”

Kori stood still for a moment, as she processed Danse’s words. Then, reluctantly, she offered her own hand to Danse. He had to restrain himself from snapping out and snatching up her hand, instead taking it slow and steady. He helped pull the woman back over the railing, and she stumbled into his embrace with a miserable grunt, slamming against his chest.

But Danse remained unmoving, unwavering. He wanted, so badly, to fall to his knees in relief, but now wasn’t the time to show weakness. Not in front of Kori. She needed his strength, not his heart. He remained standing, holding the woman in his arms, tight against himself, until he swore he could feel her fluttering heartbeat against his own.

There would be time later to fall apart at the thought that he had almost lost his only friend.

 

* * *

 

The last time Danse had been in Sanctuary, he had only been passing through, just to see the vault Kori had come from. That had been several months ago. Now, as he and Kori touched down just outside of the small neighborhood, at the other side of the bridge, Danse finally came to realize just how small this corner of Kori’s world really was. The primary defenses were a couple turrets and some guard posts, but those looked empty, currently.

“Do you think your signal got sent out?” Danse asked her as they approached. Sanctuary seemed emptier than he would have liked.

“Without a doubt,” Kori replied, tapping her Pip-Boy. She had changed out of her Institute lab coat, and was now in a simple leather jacket and jeans. “According to my radar, Nick, Piper, Cait, and Curie are already here, with Deacon, Mac, and…”

She slowed down in her walking. “And… Hancock… are on the way.”

“Hancock? The… the Ghoul?”

“Yeah…” Kori sounded as if she didn’t believe it herself. “He _never_ leaves Goodneighbor, much less without his beacon. He must… really think this is serious.”

He patted her on the back. “You have people who care about you,” Danse promised, feeling more and more glad by the minute that he had brought his Power Armor, but somehow, even more so that Kori’s friends had taken her plea for help seriously. Even if he would have to associate with people and things he didn’t necessarily approve of, he continued to remind himself that this was for Kori. “We’re all going to take care of you. You’re going to get better.”

Kori nodded, but it didn’t seem like she believed him just yet. “Just… please play nice with everyone?” she begged as they crossed the bridge into Sanctuary. “Just… pretend the Synths and Ghouls are people, and Deacon isn’t a member of the Railroad? They’ll give you the same respect if they can tell you’re trying.”

Without hesitation, Danse said to Kori, “For you, I’ll do _anything_ to help you recover.”

Neither of them had a chance to say anything further-- there was a flash of red running past Danse, and Kori was left stumbling back as she was trapped in a bone-crushing embrace. All of the air left her lungs in a rush, but not as abruptly or loudly as it did from the woman currently yanking Kori with her into Sanctuary.

“Jesus Christ, Blue!” the woman exclaimed, her grip bruising on Kori’s wrist. “If I’d known you were feeling so bad, I wouldn’t have left your side after we got that Jack Cabot Relic situation under control! I mean, yeah, I needed to make sure Nat was okay, but you could have taken a breather, come back to the office with me! Nat would have loved to have you, anyways. I tell her about all the adventures we go on, and she looks up to you like-- who’s this?”

She stopped her rant short, turning around abruptly to get right in Danse’s face. She squinted up at him with hazel eyes and pouting lips, and Kori pulled her away gently.

“Piper,” she chuckled, “this is Paladin Danse. Danse, this is Piper Wright, news reporter in Diamond City. Go ahead and shake hands.”

 _Oh boy. Here we go again_. Danse offered his friendliest, most charming smile, and extended his metal hand towards the woman. “A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Wright.”

“ _Ms._ Wright?” Piper looked as if she was about to go off on him, but he was relieved when she took his hand and shook it vigorously and beamed. “Please, Wright was what people called my dad. I’m just Piper. Glad to have you here, Danse.”

Danse smiled at the woman’s hospitality, and he was about to speak with her more, but she had already zoomed back to Kori’s side, an arm slung around the vault dweller’s shoulder.

“Okay, no, but seriously? Nat thinks you’re like, a superhero. No lie. With that being said… a little birdie told me you went into the Glowing Sea..? _Without_ me..?”

Danse couldn’t help the chuckle that bubbled out of him at the news reporter’s enthusiasm and seemingly boundless energy. He was about to continue following Kori and Piper, but a whistle stopped him short. He turned to look to a house to his right, and felt his chest tighten uncomfortably.

“Well well well, look at what the cat dragged in,” Nick snickered, waving Danse over with the promise of booze. He gestured to a cooler next to him. “Why don’t you hop out of the Power Armor, take a load off?”

“I think I’ll abstain, for the time being,” Danse replied, and after a second more of hesitation, he did end up taking a seat next to Nick, on the hood of an old car. He scoured over the old Synth, and found that nothing had seemed to change since they’d last met. Nick seemed to be doing the same to him. When their eyes met, they coughed and averted their respective gazes. “I’m surprised you came; I would have thought work would have prevented you from coming.”

“Bah. Work’s slow, and Kori’s well being is more important than any amount of caps I’ll ever make in my lifetime. And if I’m careful, that’ll be a damn long life.” Nick leaned back in his seat, tipping the fedora atop his head up so he could see, and he glanced sidelong at Danse. His beer bottle, the Paladin noticed, was completely empty-- possibly another pre-war Nick habit he had no use for, but still wanted to indulge himself in, even if only imaginary. “Besides… she saved my life. It’s how we met. So it seems only fitting I should return the favor, even if the process will take a little more time. Five days we’re all stuck out here, huh?”

“If this is where Kori wants to spend them all then yes,” Danse replied. Nick hummed, and Danse stared curiously as the old Synth took an imaginary sip of his imaginary drink.

“Any idea if… if Hancock is coming?” Nick asked, staring over Sanctuary’s bridge.

“Kori said he has his beacon, which is odd behavior for the Ghoul,” Danse informed him. “According to her, he really is on his way. I have yet to interact with him, so… this should be interesting. I’ve promised to be hospitable towards everyone, so don’t fret about any potential conflicts between me and any of the other companions I have yet to meet”

Nick nodded his approval. “Well… that’s the first time all of us will be together in one place. We all _knew_ each other at the very least, beforehand, but this will be the first time we’ve had a unanimous reason to be in the same place at the same time, and not just by some sheer coincidence. Here’s… hoping it all goes okay.”

The two of them sat in uncomfortable silence, before Nick looked up at Danse.

“She… listen, the message Kori sent out was… pretty vague. All she said was that she’d lost her son and needed moral support. But something tells me there’s more to the story we’re not hearing. I don’t want details… I just want to know how bad it really is. What she found out in her time in the Institute.”

Danse bit his lip, and stared back over the bridge out of Sanctuary.

“... I don’t feel like it’s my place to discuss it. If Kori wants to open up, then you’ll know that way. But to answer some of your suspicions… yes. It’s all… _far_ worse than what she lets on.”

“Hell,” Nick cursed, running a hand down his face, before scratching at some wires in his neck. “Well, that’s fair enough. I’m sure we’ll all get the truth sooner or later. Just in her own time.”

The android sighed deeply. “I… I _really_ don’t want to lose another friend to this. This… hopelessness. This depression. You and me… we’re going to have to work our _asses_ off to make her see this life… even with everything it throws at you, sharp or dull… this life is worth living.”

Danse snorted at Nick’s terminology. _Living_ . Nick wasn’t living. Nick was online, and that was it. The fact that he even made the _choice_ to come here was--

His thoughts halted in their own tracks when he realized the strange look Nick was giving him. Danse cleared his throat quickly, recomposing himself.

“Sorry,” he muttered. “Something got… caught in my throat.”

“... Uhuh. Okay Danse.”

As Nick expressed his disbelief, a darker man in a colonial duster walked around Nick’s chair, making an “ooh” sound at the sight of the cooler. “Don’t mind if I do, Valentine,” he chuckled, crouching down to take a beer for himself. When he stood back up, he acknowledged Danse with a nod of his head. “Hey, Danse.”

Danse blinked up at him owlishly. He _knew_ he and this man had met the last time he’d been in Sanctuary, but it was so brief, he’d completely forgotten his name. He knew he’d been leading the Minutemen before Kori took control, but beyond that information, the Paladin was only drawing up blanks.

It was just to Danse’s luck that Nick filled in the blank for him. “ _Preston_ _Garvey_ , you do realize it’s _more polite_ to ask a man if you can indulge yourself in his drink _before_ helping yourself.”

“Nick… you can’t even physically _drink_. You just have this here for aesthetic.”

“ _And_ to offer to the others when they get here. Not to mention, Hancock’s coming.”

Preston choked on his drink mid-sip, sputtering and coughing. “Hancock? _John Hancock_ is coming here, to Sanctuary.”

Nick offered up an apologetic shrug. “Kori invited _all_ of her friends, so… yeah. Hancock’s coming.”

The Minuteman knocked his hat back and whistled long and low. “Well I’ll be damned. Sanctuary won’t be a sanctuary for much longer in that case. How many houses do you estimate will blow up while he’s here?”

Danse’s eyes widened as their conversation continued.

“Preston, relax. Hancock’s a little mad in the head, but he’s not _psychotic_ . What I _do_ think will happen while he’s here, _maybe,_ is he might drag Kori into Concord to play dress-up in that old museum, or jump into the sewers to go Deathclaw hunting in vain. And, if something _does_ blow up, it’ll be on one of the empty lots. Hancock’s got enough respect to keep any potential pyrotechnic displays _outside_ of people’s homes.”

Nick paused, and glanced at a house further up the road into Sanctuary. “Is the drug stash still in there? I’m sure he’ll be bringing his own supply, but it doesn’t hurt to have backup.”

“Oh yeah,” Preston confirmed. “Had a few Raider attacks, but they never found what was in there. In fact, I think that’s where I’ll have him set up, so he’s got easy access. I really do _not_ want to see what Hancock acts like when he’s on withdrawal.”

“Should we--” Danse cut himself off, but it was too late-- both of the other’s eyes were on him. “Should we… be concerned about Hancock coming? Is this not a good idea?”

Nick stammered, for a moment. “No, no, it’s fine. Hancock will be fine. He knows better than to mess with the things Kori finds important. And this place…” Nick gestured all around them. “... well, this place is sacred. You mess with Sanctuary, and you mess with the very core of Kori’s being. Everyone knows that.”

Danse nodded in agreement. He knew that Sanctuary had been Kori’s home before the war-- it seemed to him to be a no-brainer of the location’s importance.

Preston, too, was nodding along, but after a glance towards Sanctuary’s bridge, he broke out into a beaming smile. “Mac! Deacon! There you are!” He left his place at Nick’s side to walk down the hill to greet them, the other two men shoulder to shoulder and offering Preston the same warm smile. Nick chuckled as he watched them greet each other, all hard claps on the backs and ruffling of hair and stealing of hats. The sight was heartwarming to Danse, too, as he recollected his early days in the Brotherhood, where he would have similar interactions with squad members.

“So,” the old Synth grunted, leaning towards Danse with an arched eyebrow. “You’re sitting next to a Synth, there’s a Gen-3 somewhere else in Sanctuary, and now we’ve got a Ghoul on the way. How oh how in the world are you going to manage, soldier boy?”

Danse bristled at Nick’s taunting, teasing tone. “I will get along with everyone just fine,” he argued. “So long as everyone behaves decently towards one another, I can set aside my views of non-human beings for a week.”

“Yeah? Well, I think a good place to start in proving that statement would be to hop on out of that Power Armor, and slip into something else. Regardless of the way you _act_ , you’re still wearing your heart on your sleeve in that BOS uniform. Right now, you’re fine, but I’d recommend making the change _before_ Hancock shows up. He has… very strong opinions about the Brotherhood.”

“I will do that then, I suppose,” Danse sighed, standing up.

“There’s a Power Armor station a little further into the neighborhood, you can’t miss it,” Nick instructed him. “And if you don’t have your own change of clothes, not all of the dressers have been raided yet.”

“Understood.” Danse took a hesitant step away from Nick, but paused momentarily. “I… suppose… thank you for the warning. Kori hasn’t provided… sufficient information on Hancock for me.”

“Well…” Nick reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a box of cigarettes halfway before stopping. “... if there’s one piece of advice I personally would give about Hancock, it’s this: if you make him laugh, chances are, you and him will do alright. But with Kori as your friend, the worst you have to expect from him if you piss him off is _maybe_ a bit of a hair makeover, or some drugged drinks. But he’ll never do anything malicious to you, unless you intentionally bring about harm to him. So, short version is, keep in your own lane, and he’ll only step a foot out of his, instead of charging into yours.”

“... right.” Danse nodded in understanding, before walking away from Nick and further into Sanctuary. He stepped out of his Power Armor once he found the station (albeit reluctantly), and since he’d brought a spare change of his own clothes, stepped inside the house with the Power Armor station in order to change. The holes in the wall were a bit off-putting, the Paladin more accustomed to better privacy, but he could tell that the people living here were on their way towards patching it all up.

He was just pulling on his shirt, when he heard a distant radio, shouting, and gunfire. Startled, Danse hurried out of the room, snatching up his laser rifle and charging out of the house. He was completely and entirely prepared to defend Sanctuary, even without his Power Armor, completely defenseless, but he found himself stopping short once met with the reality of the situation.

MacCready and Preston were running back over the bridge into Sanctuary, and then, over the hill in the distance, a Deathclaw came charging. Danse would have opened fire immediately, but Mac and Preston both looked equal parts terrified and giddy, smiling with wide eyes as they darted out of the way. It was the smiling itself that threw him off guard and gave him pause. Danse took note of the flares seeming to come _from_ the beast’s back, and the rope around its neck.

“Everyone make way!” Mac shouted, skidding into the dirt just as the creature bolted past. Preston ended up tripping, and he shouted as he curled up on himself, lucky enough that he wasn’t stepped on. Nick stood up out of his chair so fast it tilted over backwards, and a litany of swears slipped past his lips as he ran into the house he’d been sitting in front of. From inside that same house, Deacon peered out the window, before swearing and ducking back inside himself. Kori, Piper, and Cait, along with a fourth woman Danse didn’t recognize, all squealed in surprise from the house they had just been walking out of. While Piper and the other woman darted back inside, Cait burst into laughter, clapping a rough hand on the vault dweller’s back while she herself beamed, weapon aimed only as a precautionary measure.

“Oh, good God,” an unfamiliar voice somewhere behind Danse groaned, and he glanced back to find a Mr. Handy in rather respectable condition. “Mum… mum, why…”

The Deathclaw charged through the streets, and right past Danse. Time seemed to slow as the Paladin caught sight of a Ghoul in a tricorne hat and a red frock coat, with a radio strapped to his back and blasting _Mighty, Mighty Man_ . He had the rope that was wrapped around the beast’s neck in one hand, and a flare in the other, with a modified clip so that he could fire shot after shot, without the need to reload. His stomach churned with disgust and unease when the Ghoul turned its head, and _winked_ at him.

“Alright!” the Ghoul shouted as it ran to the end of the neighborhood, holding on for dear life. “Ease up, boy! Ease up, I said!”

He and the Deathclaw circled around the great dead tree, charging back around, but at that point, the Ghoul had tossed away the flare and has instead pulled out a double-barreled shotgun. He positioned the weapon at the Deathclaw’s head, and shouted, “Stupid fuck, I said _stop!_ ”

He fired on the Deathclaw, and it must have been weak beforehand, because that was all it took to kill the creature. Its brain matter splattered on the ground below, before it skidded across the ground. The Ghoul continued surfing on the sliding corpse, and only stepped off just as it was coming to a stop before Danse and the other companions who had come to join him. The Ghoul spread his arms wide, and broke into a broad grin as Kori stepped forwards, arms folded and smirking at him.

“Honey,” he announced with great grandeur, “I’m home.”

Kori laughed, shaking her head, and she approached the Ghoul and hugged him, a brief but firm action, one between friends.

“Welcome to Sanctuary, Hancock.”

Danse had to swallow down bile in his throat. _Everything_ about this Ghoul’s arrival was wrong. Bringing a serious threat into this settlement’s borders, firing multiple flares into the atmosphere and broadcasting their location for any nearby Raiders or Gunners in broad daylight, nearly crushing Preston Garvey, the blaring radio a beacon for anyone or anything who had been nearby as Hancock was making his way here… the way he regarded Kori like an _equal_ …

“And hello my lovely, _lovely_ fans, family, _friends_ ,” Hancock continued, stepping away from Kori and clapping his hands together as he regarded everyone. “Friends old and…”

His gaze stopped on Danse, and he eyed the Paladin with an almost seemingly _lewd_ smirk.

“... and _new_ ,” he chuckled, a wrinkled tongue darting out to wet dry, melted lips. He turned away from Danse with a quick spin, observing the small neighborhood around him. “Kori, I _love_ what you’ve done with the place, the streetlamps look _great_ and I am _especially_ digging that string of lights in that old tree over there, _where does a Ghoul go to get_ **_cranked_ ** _around here?!_ ”

Danse could barely believe what he was witnessing. He’d dealt with his fair share of non-feral Ghouls, had even had civil conversations with some, but this Hancock was on a _whole new level_ of inappropriate behavior and self-entitlement. As some of the settlers and companions lead him to the house where he would be staying, Danse watched after them with wide, twitching eyes.

Hell. This was going to be a long five days.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HEY! I'm super excited to announce that the document for Order and Maintenance is officially FINISHED! which means daily uploads are on the way! Yay! But please remember to leave comments! They're what make uploading the story at all worthwhile!

“So dear Kori here atones for her mistakes, takes out Bobbi with my assistant Fahrenheit's help, and all is well in Goodneighbor. Well… for about an hour, at least. But then I got to thinking about something. It took me a couple days to wrap my head around the situation, but the whole thing made me figure, ‘Shit… I’ve kinda lost my touch, haven’t I? Had no idea this was happening, and I sent my assistant to do my dirty work for me? Not very mayor-ly of me. I need to get back out there… and I want this woman here to show me the ropes.’ So I tightened my buckle like a big kid, got my gun and my drugs, and away we went… or so the story goes, at least.”

Hancock chuckled, leaning back on the couch where he was currently sitting under a post-war pavilion that the Minutemen had constructed and Kori had furnished and basking in the glow of flickering bulbs. To his left was MacCready, completely drunk and red in the face both from inebriation and laughter, and to his right, Cait, breathless from her own mirth. The Ghoul had propped his feet on a coffee table, with ash trays, empty liquor and Nuka Cola bottles, and the drugs that he himself solely was partaking in.

To Cait’s right was Piper, to her right Kori, then the Mr. Handy Danse had come to know as Codsworth, Dogmeat at Kori’s feet, then Nick, the fourth woman who Danse had yet to officially meet, Deacon (who was, surprisingly, acting calm and polite for once), then Preston, and gathered around him were some of his friends, and finally, Danse himself, between the Minuteman and the intoxicated sniper. He clutched a beer bottle between his hands, lips sealed tightly shut as Hancock carried on with his personal story about how he and Kori met.

The Ghoul was brash, and loud; he waltzed around Sanctuary like he owned the place, and upon being given one of the empty houses to call his own, immediately vandalized it to his liking, even going so far as to steal a couch from one of the other homes and drag it over. He tried to hitch a ride around on Codsworth, before jumping on Nick instead (which actually made Danse laugh, he was loathe to admit), and then played a game of ‘Who can impersonate Preston to a point where he gets creeped out’ with Deacon. Danse was utterly and absolutely  _ disgusted  _ with him.

Even worse, however, was that most everyone else was putting up with him.

But the  _ worst  _ thing of all was… Kori was seemingly  _ loving  _ every second he was around.

Danse was never far away from her, knew exactly where she was at all times (for the sake of Maxson’s orders and to keep her safe, of course), and somehow,  _ somehow _ , Hancock never left Kori alone for more than an hour. Between all of his shenanigans, he was sidling up next to her with some dirty pun at the tip of his tongue, or a jab at the side with a request to, “Hey, remember that one time where we…”

And every time he came around, he left Kori nearly in stitches with laughter. Danse was hardly able to get a single word in.

Now, with everyone gathered in the small pavilion nearby the tree, it was no different. The vault dweller was beaming from ear to ear as Hancock did his own retelling of how she had gotten herself mixed in with the wrong crowd, but eventually set herself straight upon seeing the light. Danse honestly couldn’t believe the story he was hearing; how could Kori have once been so astray before she knew him?

That was another thing that bothered Danse; Hancock and Kori had known each other longer than he had known her. Apparently, Kori had been out and about the Commonwealth for almost  _ three months  _ before she stumbled upon his recon team at Cambridge, and she had met the Ghoul almost the same  _ week  _ she’d escaped the vault. The thought made his blood boil, that this… this  _ thing  _ had had the privilege of acquainting himself with Kori the way he had. That he had had an influence on Kori’s life and her view of the Wasteland and its people before he had. If anything, Hancock was likely the sole reason that Kori felt as strongly about Ghoul and Synth rights as she did. Not to mention, Nick…

It was all just messy. And now, knowing who all of Kori’s friends were… Danse wondered if he really knew who  _ Kori  _ was anymore, or if he had really ever known her at all.

Danse shook his head, standing quickly and excusing himself with a mutter. Hardly anyone acknowledged him, too enraptured by the Ghoul’s silver tongue. The old woman at Preston’s side seemed to give him a knowing look, greyed eyes tired, as if having seen too much. He brushed it off as best as he could, heading down the street with his hands in his pockets, before--

“Danse? Where are you going?”

He cringed, and stopped short. ‘ _ Shit. Kori. Why. Please, just let me go. _ ’ Danse turned around with a forced grin, trying to appease her without too many questions.

“I’m just a bit overwhelmed. I’m just going to go for a short walk; I won’t leave Sanctuary.”

“Well, I mean,” the vault dweller replied, turned around in her seat to face the Paladin, “if you want, you could even go as far into the Red Rocket. No worries if you want to hang out there, you can help yourself to whatever.”

“What, Danse gets to go into the Red Rock--” MacCready was slurring angrily, but Hancock jabbed him in the side with a loud “shush!”

“That’s appreciated, but unnecessary, thank you. I’ll return shortly.” With a curt nod, the Paladin continued to walk through the darkening streets of Sanctuary. Luckily for him, it was a surprisingly warm night, given that it was only early spring-- or maybe winter was still in the middle of ending. Danse wasn’t certain. It wasn’t pertinent, anyways. He just needed the quiet, and a place to calm his tumultuous thoughts.

He was startled when a blur of brown darted past him, but quickly calmed when he saw it was just Dogmeat. The mutt had apparently decided he wanted to get up and walk about with Danse himself. The Paladin certainly wasn’t complaining. He scratched the dog’s head, and the two of them continued down the streets together.

Upon reaching the bridge out of Sanctuary, Danse sighed to himself. He didn’t feel the need to leave the neighborhood’s borders, but at the same time, a part of him felt as if this just wasn’t far away enough. He turned to look to the left, and decided that he would walk behind the houses and further down towards the river. That would be far away enough for him to feel at peace.

Once Danse reached the bank of the river, he took a seat on the damp grass, sighing again as he sat down and staring into the dark, murky waters, only a touch darker than the night sky above. Dogmeat, ever the faithful companion, plopped down in the grass next to him, tongue lolled out in satisfaction at the peace and quiet himself.

The two of them both sat in comfortable silence together, while Danse tried to organize his thoughts, and come up with some sort of plan on how to manage himself throughout the rest of the week without causing any problems with the companions he didn’t agree with. He was just reaching the deepest parts of his thoughts, when there was a timid voice speaking up behind him.

“U-um… M-Monsieur Danse..? May I join you?”

Danse turned to face the source of the voice, and his deeply furrowed brows relaxed some at the realization that it was the same shy woman from earlier, the one who Danse had yet to know. Her pixie cut made her green eyes somehow even larger and  _ more  _ stunning than they would have been normally (and yes, the first time Danse had seen her eyes, he  _ had  _ had the breath knocked out of his lungs-- he wasn’t ashamed to admit it. Those eyes could get her  _ anything _ ). And, on top of that, she carried a sweet as honey voice and French accent; he couldn’t possibly turn her away.

“Permission granted,” he said with a small smile, and he watched as the woman rushed to join him, sitting down at his right side with a happy expression of her own. She seemed excited, and it made Danse feel less alone than he had been before.

“I… I hope I am not intruding on anything,” the woman said, suddenly shy and meek again. “Something about your departure… it made me feel concern. I wanted, if you would allow me, to offer companionship, even if we did not speak.”

“Well, I appreciate it, miss..?”

The woman blinked. “Oh! Silly me! My deepest apologies; I am Curie, Monsieur.”

Danse did his best not to recoil in light surprise. This was Curie? This was the Gen-3 Synth Kori had-- oh.  _ Oh _ . This was the Gen-3 Synth. Danse inwardly cringed-- this meeting was yet another reminder that Synths could be hiding anywhere, among any group. Truly, they were a threat to be reckoned with, especially given that Danse had had his guard so low when she first showed up. She could have put a bullet in his head ten times over at this point, and he would have been none the wiser.

Outwardly, Danse forced a smile, kind and warm. “Kori told me about you. I’m… sorry… we didn’t get a chance to converse earlier in the day. I have strict orders from E-- from my… superiors… that I am to keep a watchful eye over Kori in order to guarantee her safety during this… period of strife in her life.”

“Oh, it is not a problem,” Curie assured him, beaming, and Danse hated that he loved how kind and gentle the woman looked. “I understand. Depression and suicidal tendencies are not something to be taken lightly. However, it would also be good to keep in mind that Madame Kori is now surrounded by friends who love her so very dearly. I believe that separating yourself from her would no longer be too serious of an issue, so long as she is here and at least  _ someone  _ has an eye on her. While I appreciate and approve of your desire to watch out for Madame Kori, your own mental health should take priority.”

The opinion came as a surprise to Danse-- this woman-- this  _ Synth _ \-- had only just made his acquaintance officially, and yet she was speaking so kindly to him, so cordially and with such concern. “I… I assure you, my mental state is well enough that I would have no problem dedicating all of my time and attention to Kori.”

“Well, that is good to hear! At the same time, of course, do make certain that if things become too much to bear, you take the time to take a step back and evaluate the situation from a distance, and determine whether this is good for you or not. There are others here who will be more than willing to step in where you step out.”

And boy, wasn’t  _ that  _ the very idea that scared Danse. Chances were, it would be Deacon who would take up the reins, or worst of all,  _ Hancock _ . It was an outcome the Paladin did  _ not  _ want to think about.

“I think I can manage,” Danse replied, and Curie frowned, but said nothing to counter him further.

“How… how did you meet Madame Kori? It is curious… you are Brotherhood of Steel, very different from the others.” At Danse’s startled expression, the Synth woman explained, “It is the Power Armor… I know you have covered it with cloth, but I did see you arrive in it. You are very different from Kori’s other friends.”

Danse willed himself to relax-- Curie clearly harbored no ill will towards Danse. “Well, my team and I, we were stationed at the Cambridge police station. Several members of our squad had died-- there were only three of us left. Things took a turn for the worst when we were swarmed out of nowhere by a pack of Feral Ghouls. One of my soldiers was wounded, the other defending him, so essentially, the task of keeping us all alive was left solely in my hands. I honestly thought we weren’t going to make it…”

Danse looked up to the sky, where the clouds were beginning to part, a smile on his face.

“But just then, there’s a gunshot out of nowhere- not one of our own, given that we were using laser rifles. Two Ghouls go down, immediately. Then there’s another shot, and another Ghoul goes down like a sack of rocks. By now, I’m worried that we’ll have both Ghouls  _ and  _ a potentially malicious sniper on our hands to deal with, but just as soon as that thought crossed my mind… a woman in vault clothing comes hurtling over the barricade with a bat with nails sticking out of it, and she swings it as hard as she can into one Ghoul, before drawing a pistol and shooting another in the head.”

“So she saved you, then?”

Danse laughed softly. “Yes. She did. And she would continue to save me many, many times after that, and I’m sure she will continue to do so in our travels together.”

Curie smiled over at the Paladin and hummed happily to herself. “Kori has always been so selfless and kind. I remember when I was still a Miss Nanny bot, and she freed me from the vault I was trapped in. I would not have the form I have today, nor the emotions, if she had not been so thoughtful and understanding of my request to become human.”

‘ _ But you’re not human _ ,’ Danse thought to himself, and kept to himself.

“When I think of Madame Kori, I am faced with a wide array of emotions I have come to understand over the past few months. Mostly, I feel very happy when I see her. She never fails to put a smile on my face. I also feel deep concern for her well-being; she has faced so much trauma, so much despair, and she smiled through it all… but I know she feels deep pain. But… sometimes… she frightens me terribly.”

Danse furrowed his brow at that. “Frightens you?”

“ _ Oui _ . You see, Kori… she has a certain… temper that she cannot control under certain circumstances. I believe most notably, she cannot  _ stand  _ to see children suffering or in pain. I recall one time that we were in Goodneighbor, and she heard word of a man selling drugs to children. Children! I was also enraged at the idea, but Madame Kori…”

Curie shuddered. “I do not use the word ‘bloodlust’ very freely, but really, it is the only way I could describe her actions, then… she did not look at me as if I was someone she knew, even if she did not bring harm to me.”

This was a side of Kori that Danse was unfamiliar with, and to think that sweet Curie had been exposed to this made his blood curdle in his veins. However, he was unable to express any opinions on the matter, before Curie continued to speak.

“But even with the terrible way she behaved on that day… I am still excited and glad to be in her company. I know now how dangerous and unstable she can become, and yet I feel no fear. Isn’t it strange? To love someone even when they can be bad for you?”

At that confession, Danse found himself momentarily speechless. He fought hard with his mind to speak up. “Kori-- Kori isn’t bad for you,” he muttered, “or for anyone. She’s just… human. Certain things make her more upset than others, but she isn’t a bad person.”

The Synth woman hummed in thought. “Yes… you are right. But… it is still strange, how we develop bonds towards people, even if they do things we do not approve of. We can still feel very deeply for another person despite their actions. I know of very dangerous relationships where one person is very mean, or even violent towards another, and yet the other will still feel very passionately about their abuser. I do not fear that Kori and I will develop that dynamic, but her violent anger makes me think sometimes how lucky I am to be her friend, and not her enemy.”

Danse processed Curie’s words quietly. He felt that way, too, but something about that statement-- about feeling lucky to be her friend-- something about it just… didn’t feel complete to him.

“What about you, Monsieur Danse?”

The Paladin looked back to Curie. “Me?”

“Yes. How does Kori make you feel?”

He struggled, for a moment, to find his voice, but eventually he did. “Well, Kori… I… certainly care about her, of course. I suppose if I had to be particular about my array of emotions, I would say that her presence is calming, to me. Not that I was ever anxious or restless beforehand, but when Kori is around, I feel like I have someone I can depend on with the most vulnerable parts of myself. She has always been a great source of strength for me, from the very beginning of our relationship. That isn't something I can say about anyone else.”

The Synth woman blinked innocently. “Oh! So you are in love with her then?”

The Paladin coughed on a startled inhale, shaking his head wildly. “In love-- I, n-no, no, it’s not-- I don’t mean romantic relationship, I mean… I mean…”

What  _ did  _ he mean?

Thankfully, Curie made a sound of understanding and giggled. “Ah, my mistake. I had figured, based on her calming effect on you and they way you feel you can depend on her with your emotions, that you were implying a romantic relationship between you, or at the very least a romantic attraction.”

“That would be incorrect,” he stammered, and suddenly, Dogmeat’s furry head was very interesting. “No, we are not… we’re not romantically involved.”

Curie nodded, before leaning towards Danse. “What other emotions does Kori cause you to feel?”

“Well, Kori is calming to me, but she is also…” He paused, for a moment, to consider his words. “She is also a source of joy. She makes me feel happy, as her presence is inspirational and her optimism never fails to lift me up. I also share your sentiment of concern, in regards to her facing this… this horrifying new world. The fact that she has remained strong for this long is a true indicator of her overall character. She really is someone we can trust with our lives.”

Curie arched a brow. “... And..?”

Danse thought it was presumptuous for her to assume there was more, but… she was right, somehow. “She… she also makes me feel… scared.” It was a shock to himself to admit it. “Yes. Scared. And angry. Because she’s so brave… too much for her own good. She’s very cocksure, and I think it will get her killed one day, and… I can’t bear to stand by and watch that happen. I have to protect her, or I feel like… like I’ll lose a part of myself. She… she makes me feel so much… pain, but at the same time, I’ve never felt… so alive…”

He couldn’t speak anymore after that, surprised at himself for what he had said, what he hadn’t even considered until this moment. But Curie only hummed thoughtfully, and offered a gentle pat to Danse’s shoulder. “I… do not mean to be intrusive, but… those are all very much symptoms of being in love, or at the very least, of having a very,  _ very  _ strong emotional connection to someone. If you truly insist that you do not love her, at the very least, you must enjoy her companionship  _ very  _ much.”

Danse’s throat felt sticky.

“... I… I guess I do…”

But how could he love a woman whose past he knew nothing of? He knew who she was now… but who was she as a  _ whole _ ?

 

* * *

 

Kori lived in a blue house in the middle of the neighborhood, across the way from the house with the Power Armor station. Danse intercepted her just as she was turning in for the evening, Hancock and a couple others still at the pavilion at the end of the neighborhood. They were drinking and dancing, and overall just causing a ruckus.

“Kori,” Danse called, and she stopped just before she would have gone inside. His heart sank when that same sad, empty expression was back on her face, and she folded her arms impatiently as he rushed up to her. “Kori, are you going to be alright for the night?”

The vault dweller sighed, looking down at Dogmeat, who whimpered. “I don’t know,” she confessed, looking like she wanted to curl in on herself. Danse had to fight back every urge to hold her close again, like earlier that same morning. “I don’t know, but you don’t have to worry about anything happening. Like I said, I’m not brave enough to use a weapon on myself, or seek out dangerous situations.”

“Are you--” He paused, figuring out his words. “Do you want… company?”

Danse facepalmed internally at his poor phrasing. Of  _ course  _ she wanted company; when they were traveling, she always kept Danse close--

“Actually… I think it would be… better if we stayed in separate houses, here.” She bit her lip, and she wouldn’t look directly at Danse. “It’s just-- it’s nothing personal, I promise, it has nothing to do with Sanctuary itself, what it is is… well, it’s… I just don’t need there to be unnecessary gossipping about us staying in the same house together, even if nothing happens, not to mention, Hancock’s going to eventually piece together that that suit of Power Armor over there is yours… and I can only help you with the fallout from that if I’m not involved. It’d be better if everyone thought we were just friends. And, I mean, we  _ are  _ just friends, but… you know…”

The statement shouldn’t have stung like a Stingwing’s attack the way that it did, but Danse honestly couldn’t help the crushed feeling that took over his heart at Kori’s words. He took a deep breath to steady himself. “Right. Of… course. If that’s the case, if you could… direct me towards a currently unoccupied building, I would be very appreciative.”

“Yeah, I got you,” Kori muttered, and she gestured for Danse to follow. “Everyone already claimed places earlier, so unfortunately, all that’s left is the house right by the pavilion. You just walk inside, I’ll tell Hancock to wrap things up.”

“And he’ll listen to you.” Danse didn’t make it a question, but it was clear that he didn’t believe her.

“This is  _ my  _ home. He better goddamn listen. He may have given us all Deathclaw steak for dinner, but I’ll be damned before he tells me what to do in  _ my  _ neighborhood.”

There was a  _ little  _ energy in her words, and it caused Danse to chuckle as he followed. The two of them approached the pavilion, and Kori clapped her hands together to get everyone’s attention. Only Hancock, Deacon, MacCready, and Cait remained, all in varying degrees of intoxication and laughter.

“Alright, kids,” she commanded, “Danse is sleeping right next to the pavilion in that house there, so you need to head off to bed yourselves in a half hour.”

“Awe, seriously Kori?” Hancock balked, spilling some alcohol on Mac’s head. The sniper  was near catatonic, and only swatted Hancock’s hip in annoyance. “You’re enacting a curfew on us for this wet towel’s sake? Dante, come on, don’t be a square, have a seat, get wasted with us.”

“It’s  _ Danse _ ,” he corrected the Ghoul, folding his arms and glaring. Kori hushed him gently.

“Look, it’s not just about Danse, it’s just a matter of common decency. Sanctuary is quiet and peaceful at night, okay? It’s kind of an unspoken rule. If the walls of the houses were actually complete, I’d say it’s okay to stay up a little longer if you kept the noise down, but as it is, everything’s paper thin around here. Curfew’s at 11:30, no later. If I get any noise complaints, it’s gonna be caps on the line.”

“Jesus  _ Christ, _ mom,” Deacon grunted, standing up and yanking up MacCready with him. “‘S no fun when there’s a time limit on shit. But yeah, I get what you mean about decency. Railroad’s the same. C’mon, Mac, you’re totally fucked.”

MacCready shoved at Deacon as he was dragged away, shouting out, “Ex- _ cuse  _ you, last night it was  _ Robert _ , you  _ whore--  _ no no, no, shut up, that doesn’t count as a swear… especially if it’s true…”

“Damn it Kori,” Hancock sighed, tutting in disappointment as Deacon and MacCready parted, “you scared away the resident gays.”

The vault dweller’s eyes widened. “Wait, are they really?”

“We don’t know for sure,” Cait replied, “but with the way they’re always stuck at each other’s damn hips, you can’t blame us for assumin’.”

“Okay, yeah fair, look, Hancock, I’m only doing things this way because this is the  _ only  _ way I know how to get you to listen. Sanctuary is important to me, and I know you’re not a ‘follow the rules to a T’ guy, but that isn’t going to fly here. If I say this is how it’s going to be, this is how it’s going to be. Until then, you’re allowed to get as wild and noisy as you want, but everything shuts off at 11:30. No ifs, ands, or buts.”

Finally, the Ghoul sighed in submission. “Yeah, alright. I get it. Sanctuary is… well… a sanctuary. A place of peace, your dojo, blah blah blah. I’ll keep things mellow. In the meantime…”

Hancock gestured to the seat Deacon had just vacated.

“Danse. Sit. Drink.”

The Paladin glanced to Kori for aid, but was shocked to find her already walking away. He had to do a double take, before turning back to the expectant Ghoul. Hancock was still unaware that he was a BOS Paladin, which would explain why he was still being hospitable to him. He gulped, and glanced towards his assigned house.

“I’m… actually quite exhausted,” he admitted, hands in his pockets. “I escorted Kori here today, and we ran into a bit of opposition.”

“Yeah? Yeah, and I temporarily made a Deathclaw my magnificent steed, you see me bitching? Look, you only have to be here for another half hour, might as well get to know each other. Come on… you know you want to…”

‘ _ I really actually don’t. Fuck you. _ ’ Danse looked to Cait for help, but she only shrugged. Danse was on his own in trying to weasel out of this. At last, Hancock’s arm dropped, the bottle of alcohol almost dropping to the floor in the process.

“Look, we’ve got to have a serious talk about Kori, all three of us. She is  _ not  _ doing good, and despite the fact we’re all here now, friends or not, there’s still a possibility we’ll lose her sometime this week if we’re not careful. We’ve got to come up with a game plan on how to keep her engaged, and get her to see the light.”

Now  _ that  _ was a common goal that Danse could agree to working on, even  _ if  _ it was with one of the most vile Ghouls he’d ever had the misfortune of meeting. With a sigh, Danse moved so that he was in Deacon’s chair, and Hancock laughed giddily and thrust a beer bottle into his hands.

“That’s it, atta boy!” he praised him, and Danse wanted to punch him so hard, his nose ceased to exist, or what little was left of it. The Ghoul took his seat, and the tone became serious again.

“Danse, I know that you know  _ exactly  _ what’s got Kori so fucked up. Don’t try to hide it; I can tell from looking at you you’re a terrible liar. So what the fuck happened? What happened to Shaun?”

“It’s not my position to say,” he replied simply, but coldly. “It’s Kori’s. If she isn’t going to give all of the details, that’s her decision. But I won’t be explaining the situation either, unless given explicit approval from her. All you need to know, is that Shaun is no longer a part of her life, and the strain of losing all of her family and anything that linked her to the pre-war world took a heavy toll on her mental health.”

Hancock stared at Danse for a moment, before shaking his head. “Oh my God, you’re a walking dictionary,” he muttered, taking a drink of vodka. “Okay, well, that sucks. Alright, so here’s the plan: Kori isn’t going to shoot herself, that’s not how she works. Will she try to starve herself? Maybe. Will she take any opportunity to leave Sanctuary and then practice negligent behavior once she’s on the road? Likely. With that being said, here’s the plan: we’ve got to keep her engaged at all times, while also reminding her why she made friends with all of us in the first place. So one of you will  _ probably  _ have to die, because I killed someone the first time I met Kori and she was fucking thrilled.”

Cait snorted. “Well if that’s the case, looks like I’m going to have to get addicted to drugs again and snort enough Mentats to believe I’m the legendary Queen of England.” 

Hancock pointed his wrinkled fingers her way in approval. “You, I like you, you’ve got a good sense of humor.”

Danse clenched his jaw, and shook his head with a sigh.

“Danse! Why does Kori like you?”

He took a moment to think of what it was that brought them together; resorting to their first meeting at Cambridge wasn’t right, she had only been trying to help, and they weren’t friends at that point. Really, she’d been nice to him, but they hadn’t been friends until…

There was a flash of Kori beneath him, calling his name in the throes of pleasure, and Danse had to blink rapidly to will the memory out of his mind, before it showed on his face.

“We’ll need… we’ll need a Deathclaw or two,” he murmured, pressing his beer bottle to his head.

Hancock whistled. “Damn, what kind of parties are  _ you  _ two having? I want in, shit. Two? Really?”

“An Alpha and a Matriarch,” he confirmed.

“Holy shit, that’s guts. You may not be funny at all, but you’re tough. I can respect that, Danse. I can respect that.” Hancock took another swig of Vodka. “Okay, with that being said, we have our ideas of what drew her to us, but now we have to think realistically. Cait’s obviously not going to get hooked on the Psycho again, and I can’t just murder anyone for the sake of it. Not here, at least. So, Cait, ideas, go.”

“I’m thinking that, since Kori has always been there for me, and she was so patient and understanding when I begged her to help me with my addiction, I’ll offer the same thing for her depression. Mostly only if I spot her cryin’, of course, but if she seems down, I’ll try then too. I think she just needs to be reminded that we’re all here for her, no matter what.”

“Perfect, I love it, you should be a psychiatrist, Danse, your idea, go.” Hancock snapped his fingers, indicating urgency.

“I, uh--” Danse cleared his throat. ‘ _ Don’t think about sex, don’t think about hugging her, intimacy is out of the question. Be reasonable _ .’ “I’m going to help her out with tasks around Sanctuary, when she can’t do it alone. It will give us time to reminisce and to consider the future, both for her, and for us as a unit.”

“Good, very practical, you’re smart too, I dig it.” Hancock clicked his tongue. “As for me, I’m going to remind her why we do this.”

He gestured all around, and Cait and Danse both exchanged a confused glance. Hancock sighed.

“You know,  _ living _ . But more specifically, I’m going to remind her why we go out there, and we steal from the rich and give to the poor, why we bring sunshine into people’s lives even when we get nothing in return… and how it all pays off, in the long run. How the admiration and respect will one day prove to be your saving grace in the face of Death. You know? You help me, I help you, a friend in need is a friend indeed?”

Cait and Danse both made sounds of realization, nodding in agreement, and the Ghoul smirked to himself in self-satisfaction. Danse, while he wasn’t sure about Hancock’s Robin Hood-esque outlook, was glad that the seemingly self-centered Ghoul was making Kori a priority in her time of need. If he continued to act this way, maybe he’d survive the week after all.

“So, the three of us have got a plan. Good! It’s a start. Everyone’s gonna need to pull their weight to make sure this all pays off and that we don’t lose our beacon of hope, so  _ don’t slack off _ . Losing a kid, that’s serious business. When you’re a parent, you feel like that’s your one and only job, so failing that is like being shot in the head and living; not a fun experience. The main thing here, though, is to  _ stay patient,  _ and to  _ stay positive _ . If you get frustrated and let it show, it’s going to take everything back to square one. So, everyone! Chins up, get some sleep, and we will enact our plans in the morning.”


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey you all, I just wanna say, thank you so much for reading! It really means a lot to me that you guys are actively commenting and telling me that you enjoy this fic. Please keep 'em coming! I love responding and interacting with you all!

Danse awoke to the sounds of groggy voices, and the smell of cooking meat. His stomach grumbled in interest, seemingly attempting to tug him out of bed. With a groan, he acquiesced to his hunger’s begging, pulling himself out of bed and reaching over for a shirt.

“Hey Danse!”

Danse shouted as MacCready popped his head up above the window, all smiles and excitement.

“MacCready! A little privacy!?” he exclaimed, covering his chest with his shirt.

“Nope, no privacy in the morning. Listen, you gotta get out here, Hancock’s balancing all the silverware, and Cait’s gonna set Dogmeat loose on it just when he’s about to finish. It’s going to be _golden_ , and if you miss it, I will never forgive you.”

The Paladin grumbled as he slipped on his shirt, and made a mental note to himself to board up his windows later sometime in the week. “Is Kori a part of this?”

“Nope; that’s what makes it even _better_ . This is a _great_ way to start her day. Hurry and get out here so you don’t miss it! Plus, all the food is almost gone.”

That helped spur him into action a little more quickly, and soon, Danse was exiting the house and walking over to the pavilion. Most everyone was there-- Nick had one of Piper’s newspapers, and they were reading together as she explained the inspiration for her story, Deacon and Cait were riling up Dogmeat in the distance, and Hancock, sure enough, was combining knives and forks to create a haphazard tower.

Mac threw an arm around Danse’s shoulders, dragging him into a seat across from Kori after the Paladin had grabbed his own plate of food. She smiled and offered a meek wave, to which Danse smiled and returned the gesture. He hoped that she was okay today.

“This,” the Ghoul informed everyone present as Danse settled down, “shall be my magnum opus. My greatest masterpiece, the pinnacle of all my achievements. You dig?”

“I dig,” MacCready replied, snickering as he observed Cait and Deacon in the distance. He was bouncing in his seat with excitement. “You’re doing good work here, Hancock.”

“You’re damn right. And this monument to my greatness shall stay up all week, you hear me? _All_ week. No one is allowed to touch this. We eat like pigs, and feast our eyes upon this majesty here.”

“Long live the _tour de la merde_ ,” Nick snorted as he blew out a puff of smoke. Piper snorted as well.

“Hey!” Hancock barked. “Cut the crap; you all know I’m an architectural _genius_.”

“Sure!” Kori agreed, head in her hand. “And I’m the Silver Shroud.”

Curie was just arriving to the gathering with a plate of her own food, when there was a shout, and a baseball went soaring over Hancock’s head. He was only left to blink in surprise and slight fright, before there was a shout of, “Go get it!” Moments later, Dogmeat was leaping over the table and directly through Hancock’s nearly completed tower of forks and knives. The silverware went flying in every direction, and uproarious laughter erupted in the pavilion as the Ghoul stood shocked. Danse, too, was laughing, and he was pleased when he looked over and saw that Kori was in tears.

“Well, there goes that reign of silver,” Nick chuckled, standing up and walking away.

Hancock sputtered at Nick, before shouting, “From the ashes, a new phoenix will rise! And I’ll be using _spoons_ this time too! Cower in fear!”

Danse snorted at that, and jolted when MacCready clapped him on the back. “See!? Aren’t you glad I came and got you? You would have missed that!” He placed a plate of Radscorpion omelette in front of the Paladin before running off to congratulate Cait and MacCready.

“Sometimes,” Kori sighed, watching as he went off, “I forget he’s a grown ass man. Then again, he didn’t really grow up with any parents, so in a way… he may be a little kid forever.”

Danse stared after MacCready himself, digesting Kori’s words, and suddenly, a lot more of his actions made sense to him. Danse cringed a little as he thought of how he could have turned out the same way, had it not been for the Brotherhood's intervention. “Do you have any plans today?” he asked Kori as he dug in to his omelette, hoping that if she did, he’d be able to assist her any way he could.

“Well…” She thought about it, for a moment. “I was gonna make a supply run to Concord, but otherwise, I haven’t had any _solid_ plans… why do you ask?”

“I was simply wondering if you needed any assistance,” he replied, sitting up straighter. “Whatever you can’t carry, I’d be more than happy to take for you.”

“Actually,” she said with a slight cringe, “Deacon already called dibs for this mission. But how about when I come back, you and me will find something else to do, alright?”

Danse struggled not to speak through clenched teeth. “Deacon. I see. Then I’ll see what I can do to make myself useful here.”

Just as he said that, a man in overalls with welding goggles around his neck placed his palms on the table next to Danse. “Did I hear somebody say they want to make themselves useful? That’d be a first around here.” When Danse looked up to who was speaking, he came face to face with a rugged looking man, face coated in oil and grease. He held out his hand for Danse to shake. “Name’s Sturges. I’m the resident mechanic, basically. I could actually use a second hand with the water purifier back down the river-- the lever for the internal hatch is busted, so I need a second set of hands to hold it open for me.”

“I can assist with that,” Danse replied, even though what he really wanted was to convince Kori that he could help her out with her supply mission. He shot her a wary smile, before standing up. “I’ll be here if you need me,” he said, before allowing Sturges to lead the way. He snarled quietly to himself when, upon glancing back, he found that Hancock had slid in to sit next to Kori, an arm around her shoulder and fiddling with a knife with his free hand.

“You alright there?” Sturges asked, and Danse shook his head.

“I’m fine,” he lied. “I’m fine.”

Sturges shrugged, but said nothing more.

Throughout the day, Sturges continually offered various tasks around Sanctuary for Danse to complete, and the Paladin did so without complaint. The work helped to pass the time, and Danse wanted to leave Sanctuary as soon as he possibly could. He wasn’t enjoying the company of all these people so far, and he had very little confidence that that would change, so all of the work was a welcome distraction. Occasionally, MacCready or Cait would slink by to tease him, sensing his bitter mood, and Danse had to continuously remind himself that he couldn’t stage an accident. Not with these people, at least.

It was about two in the afternoon, while Danse was repairing the door to Nick’s current place of residence, when he heard Deacon’s familiar voice closeby. Knowing that this meant that Kori was back, he went to greet them, but stopped just short of rounding the corner.

“We’ve been making the rounds, doing the job,” Deacon stated, most likely to Kori. “It’s time you learn the Big Secret.”

 _That_ was what caused Danse to stop short. Quietly, he pressed himself to the wall, as close as he could, to better hear what Deacon had to say. He _knew_ that bastard had been hiding _something_. Well, joke was on him now-- the Spy was being spied on.

“Everyone thinks Desdemona is the big boss. She calls the ops, gives the ra-ra speeches, but it’s just an act. She does what I tell her to because the Railroad’s my show. It’s been that way since I founded it.”

“Oh really.” Sure enough, that was Kori’s voice. Danse could almost imagine the cock of her head, the hands on her hips, unimpressed.

“Sure. Me and Johnny D and Watts. Hell, that was over 60? 70 years ago?” _70 years ago?_ So Deacon was a _Synth_ . Christ, they were _everywhere_ . “After a while, you lose count. I _tell_ everyone I get the occasional face change to stay anonymous. Truth is, it takes a lot of work to keep this mug handsome.”

Deacon laughed to himself at that, but it was short lived.

“We’ve come a long way since the beginning. We’ve done a lot of good. Saved a lot of synths. But we’re about more than that. We’re the last and only line of defense between the Institute and the Commonwealth. Hell, maybe even the world.”

‘ _No_ ,’ Danse wanted to argue, _‘That’s the Brotherhood. Your organization assists the enemy. You’re the ones that help set the damn abominations loose._ ’ Before he could lose control of himself, Kori snickered blandly.

“You’ve lied to me at least once. This is just more of the same.”

There was a pause, and then a sigh of defeat.

“Yeah, you got me. But you’re going to hear the same sort of lies elsewhere. There’s other organizations out there. And, in time, I’m sure they’re going to spoon-feed you their own patented form of bullshit. Ignore the verbiage and look at what they’re doing. What they’re asking you to do. What sort of world they’d have you build, and how they’re going to pay for it.”

Danse frowned at that. So hypocritical; he didn’t _like_ Deacon, but he had honestly hoped he would be better than that, at _least_ towards Kori. She’d done so much for _everyone_ \-- she didn’t deserve to be lied to the way Deacon did to everyone. She was worth more than that. She was worth more than him.

“So what do you think of the other groups out there then?” Kori inquired.

Deacon hummed with thought. “Well, love the job you’re doing with the Minutemen. Historically, they’ve been little better than policemen, though. The Brotherhood… well, I met them on an op in Capital Wasteland a few years back. But now with Elder Maxson… Let’s just say I’m not a fan. And the Institute. Well, do I really need to answer that? But what I think doesn’t matter.”

Staying quiet was growing _very_ difficult.

“The real question though is… what do _you_ think? And, at the end of the day, you’ll need to make a choice. Make it the right one.”

The footsteps from before resumed, and Danse spurred into action, quick. He rushed inside of the house, through the door he’d been working on, and closed it quietly behind him. He watched as Deacon and Kori continued their walk into Sanctuary through a crack in the wall, fuming quietly to himself all the while.

“You know,” a familiar voice in the house behind him said, “normally, I’d get on your case-- pun intended-- for being a snoop, but one snoop deserves another, in Deacon's case. Oh, also, knocking would have been nice.”

Danse closed his eyes and sighed through his nose. “You heard their conversation too, didn’t you?”

“Every word. For Kori being so adamant that we adhere to a curfew and give each other privacy, she herself seems to forget the walls to these houses aren’t exactly _complete_ anymore.”

Danse stood straighter, and turned around to face Nick. The Synth was at a desk, several files in front of him and around him, and he was tapping a pen to his forehead as he took in a drag of his cigarette and watched Danse carefully.

“And what do _you_ think about what Deacon had to say?” Danse inquired.

“Well…” Nick tapped out some of the ash from his light. “Deacon’s got a point about faction propaganda; you’re going to run into it no matter _where_ you go though. It was very biased of him to leave out the Railroad, so I’ll fill in that blank. While, as a Synth myself, I appreciate the work that they’re doing, they’re a little hyper-focused on Synth lives, and have ended up neglecting humans as a result. They seem to forget that we’re all in this together, and there’s not going to _be_ anyone left to help Synths if they don’t start looking out for their own kind.”

Danse approached Nick, and took a seat at the other side of the desk. “And now you’re being over-detailed, so I want to hear what _you_ have to say about the Minutemen and the Brotherhood.”

“You’re not gonna like what I’ve got to say about the Brotherhood,” Nick warned.

“I’m an adult, and I am well aware of the public’s concerns about our organization. I want to hear from your perspective, as a Synth with a previously human mind, what you think, for future analysis and critical feedback.”

Nick furrowed his brow, scrutinizing Danse for a moment, before sighing. He stamped out his cigarette and leaned back in his chair.

“The Minutemen have been around almost as long as the Brotherhood, historically speaking, and they’ve had a rough go of it. They’ve really done great things for the Commonwealth, but I think the power and the control got to their heads a little. I think Kori sees this, which is why she’s keeping her distance from Preston a little. They may have their Castle back because of her, and they’re for sure a beacon of hope, but history tends to repeat itself. Infighting caused them to fall apart, and they really only offered their services when it was guaranteed they’d be compensated for their efforts. They claim to be charity, but should they reclaim the throne they once held, I fear a sort of almost feudalistic type of rule will take hold.”

“And the Brotherhood?”

Nick cringed.

“Okay. Bear with me here. I’ve heard of what the Brotherhood has done since they were in the Capital Wasteland, and I heard about the Lone Wanderer and the Enclave. I’ve heard everything there is to hear about Project Purity, and your people’s involvement in that, and honestly… _that’s_ the Brotherhood everyone misses. Elder Maxson’s takeover was cast in red silk and velvet due to his bloodline’s history with the organization, but the truth under it all is cold and sharp, and _anyone_ can cut themselves if they’re not careful. The Brotherhood, however, is _very_ good at propaganda to mask all of that, but mostly towards those foolish enough to join in the first place. It all happens _inside_ the Prydwen and the military bases."

Nick brought his hands together, and tapped his fingers against his lips.

"You have good intentions, don’t misunderstand-- protect humanity and document the past for future generations to learn from. It’s a respectable and noble goal, and I don’t want to do anything to negate that aspect, but I’ve lived over a hundred years, Danse-- I know who the enemies are, and aren’t, and Ghouls and Gen-3’s are _not_ among them. We’ve had this conversation before, so I won’t give you the whole lecture again, but I’m telling you, just because Ghouls are a little wrinkled and get sick when they take Radaway, doesn’t make them less human than they were before. Just because Gen-3 Synths have a little teeny _tiny_ chip in their brain, _doesn’t make them less human._ And the Brotherhood labeling them as lesser simply because of their origins or their experiences, is wrong. It’s out of their league to determine that-- only Synths and Ghouls, and their _actions_ as a whole and not just as individuals, can define their stance in society. If they really do something horrendous, and then _everyone_ claims to share the horrific views of their worst people, _then_ you have every right to damn their race.”

“Do I have to remind you about the Broken Mask Incident?” Danse scowled.

“You mean that _one_ isolated incident where one of the first _prototype_ Gen-3 Synths just _happened_ to have a malfunction that could have happened to a mentally ill human?” Nick growled. “And before you speak up again, any other Gen-3’s who went out to kill humans have said, when interrogated, it was for the Institute. Escaped or mind wiped Synths wouldn’t do anything malicious to humanity _unless_ threatened or pushed to the brink by intolerance _like the Brotherhood is promoting_.”

Danse recoiled slightly, blinking rapidly. The old Synth muttered to himself, and set about lighting another cigarette, clearly stressed about the situation.

“Hate breeds hate, Paladin,” he informed him, searching for his lighter. When he found it, he set his cigarette in his mouth, speaking around it as he lit it. “And whether human or Ghoul, Synth or Super Mutant, we are all races of ‘do unto others as you would have done unto yourself.’ Maybe next time you walk back into that shiny blimp and get ordered on a raid of some Ghoul-run farm, you’ll take a moment to think to yourself, ‘why _exactly_ is it that we dislike non-humans, other than the way they look and the way they’re created?’”

And, apparently, that was the end of the conversation. Nick spun his chair around, facing away from Danse and puffing smoke angrily, leaving the Paladin bewildered and hurt.

“Nick,” Danse balked, trying to regain his attention, “You… you don’t understand. They’re all frightened and ashamed of what they are, we’re being merciful--”

“They only reason they _are_ that way, is because of people like _you_ , Danse. You can play nice guy all you want, but when everyone else figures out you’re just as bigoted as the rest of the Brotherhood, they’ll want you out, and I don’t know how far Kori’s influence can save you.”

Danse’s nostrils flared, and he stood up abruptly. “I don’t need Kori to babysit me,” he countered. “Whatever may come, I’ll face it myself, head-on. Her assistance, or anyone else’s, is unnecessary, but I stand by my beliefs; The Brotherhood has _everyone’s_ best interests in mind. Even if those interests include the eradication of Ghouls and Synths, it’s better for them. It’s better for _everyone_.”

He turned heel and left Nick’s house without another word, but he heard something shatter inside once he was gone. He didn’t bother to turn back and check what it was. Nick was a capable man; he could take care of any messes he left behind himself.

 

* * *

 

“You look like you’ve been having a fun day,” Kori said to Danse as he marched up to her. She was sitting on her front porch, Codsworth hovering semi-protectively in front of her at the sight of the Paladin’s aggressive approach. At the sight of the robot protecting her, Danse calmed himself and rubbed his temples.

“It’s been… I’ve been well-distracted, I’ll say that much,” he sighed. “How did your supply run go?”

“It was fairly successful,” she replied with a smile. She held out a cup of something to Danse. “Found one of my favorite drinks. Have a sip.”

Cautiously, Danse took the cup from Kori. He sniffed it, and his mouth watered at the sweet scent from the strangely yellow liquid. Confident enough that it wasn’t anything toxic, he did as previously instructed. At the bittersweet taste, he puckered his lips, and the vault dweller snorted and laughed.

“Not used to it, huh? It’s called lemonade; we made it from a fruit called lemons. This was just a powder packet I added to water, but fresh-made lemonade was better, I promise.”

“It is certainly… powerful,” Danse managed to get out, handing Kori back her cup. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, squinting at the Mr. Handy by her side, and one of his hands came to cup one of his eyes and tilt it side to side.

“Sir,” Codsworth said rather indignantly, using an arm to push Danse away, “while I do not mind curious harmless inspection, I believe it would have been _polite_ to ask.”

“Sorry, Codsy,” Kori apologized, standing up with a grunt. “Danse has a hard time with robots.”

“I’m… standing right here.”

“Well, doesn’t stop you from behaving the same way in front of Ghouls and Synths,” Kori countered, punching him the chest playfully.

Ouch. And it wasn’t because of the hit.

“So, you still wanna work together on something?” Kori asked him, hands on her hips and head tilted. “If you’ll come in the house with me, I’ve got some things for you to do in here.”

Danse blinked. Kori was going to let him into her home? Her pre-war home? Codsworth must have been thinking the same thing, because the old bot said, “Mum, I’m sure that if you told me what to do, I could--”

“Oh no, you’ll be working too, Codsworth. Don’t worry. You two will be painting a wall in the master bedroom, and I’ll be there soon myself, but I’ve got to take care of something else real quick. Think you boys can get along?”

“Absolutely, mum!” Codsworth exclaimed happily. The three eyes on the bot turned to stare at Danse. “Well then, shall we, sir? I’ve been anxious to make your acquaintance officially for quite some time now!”

“Sure. Let’s get to work.” Danse offered the Mr. Handy a genuine smile-- after all, the robot was doing exactly as it was programmed to. No harm here.

Kori lead the way into the house, and Danse took it all in as if it was the last time he would be able to. For being a restored pre-war structure, it was rather nicely refurbished. The floors were close to spotless, the counter a little less dull than others, the table a little more smooth… everything seemed to be the original, but had been meticulously taken care of. Whether that was by Codsworth, or by Kori, or a combination of both, Danse wasn’t completely certain.

“Go ahead and show him where the bedroom is, Danse,” Kori instructed the Mr. Handy. “I’m going up to the vault.”

“The vault? Mum, why would you-- what purpose would you have to go up there?”

Danse, too, wanted to know, but kept his mouth shut. But all Kori offered was a small smile, and a pat on Danse’s shoulder. “Just burning some garbage away from Sanctuary.”

“O-oh.” The bot seemed to know what she meant, and Kori parted without so much as a farewell. “Well then, I suppose we best get to work, sir. This way, please!”

Danse nodded, still watching Kori walk away for a brief moment, before following Codsworth through the small hall to the left. He stopped short when his foot brushed over something, and upon looking down, spotted a small holotape. He glanced up, quickly-- Codsworth hadn’t noticed he’d stopped, or seen the holotape. Faster than even he himself could blink, Danse snatched it up, and shoved it into his pocket. He would give it to Kori himself later.

As Danse hurried to catch up to the bot, he took note of the room to the right-- something completely empty, devoid of any furniture, or any indication of what it would have been before the war. He frowned, a part of him itching to know, but he managed to redirect his attention to the task at hand well enough. There were two cans of yellow paint in the master bedroom, and Codsworth had already gotten started, at the other end of the room. The machine was humming some unknown tune, but the sound of it put Danse to ease, somehow. With a sigh, he knelt down, grabbing a brush for himself, and getting to work.

Over an hour later, Kori still had not returned. The Paladin frowned as he set down his paintbrush, the wall already halfway complete. Codsworth, as well had stopped working, and seemed to be regarding Danse carefully.

“Sir… I hate to ask this of you, but… would you mind finding out where mum is? I’m a bit concerned, especially with the way she’s been behaving as of late. And last night… it was horrific, what became of her…”

Danse wanted to know what happened last night, but decided against it. He offered a reassuring smile, and replied, “I’ll head up to the vault and see if she’s alright. Don’t worry, Codsworth; she wouldn’t leave unannounced. Not after bringing everyone here. I’m more than certain she’s up there-- perhaps she just needed some time to herself.”

“I do hope you are correct, sir,” the bot said softly as the Paladin left the house.

As soon as he stepped outside, Danse spotted the smoke up on the hill. His eyes widened at the sight, but he forced himself to remain calm; Kori was suicidal, but she wouldn’t set herself on fire. It was too slow, too painful for her liking. He took a deep breath, and began the walk across the bridge and up the hill.

Once through the gate, the smell hit him-- it was smokey, for sure, but there was also wood, which made him frown. Whatever Kori was burning, she was wasting; it was likely that could have been used in cooking, or towards some other building project. As he rounded the corner, he saw her, kneeling on the vault elevator, and he saw what exactly it was she was burning… all previous selfish thoughts were out the window.

He may have been born into a world where there was no time to stay young, but he could recognize the splintered remnants of a crib, and a mobile. Anyone could.

And there Kori was, on her knees, hands in her lap, hair blowing in the wind as the smoke and ash were carried far, far away, southeast, over the landscape of the Commonwealth. Embers jumped into the air when a piece of the crib collapsed onto other ashes, furniture that Danse had not been present to see burn. Kori barely flinched, even though surely, the heat from her distance was oppressive and overbearing.

Slowly, Danse approached. He wasn’t quiet about it. He made certain she knew he was there, before placing a hand on her shoulder and staring down into the flames by her side. Almost the moment his hand came in contact with her shoulder, she spoke up.

“It was too painful to keep in the house,” she whispered brokenly, obviously having been crying. “Gabriel and I… we built it together. The crib. The mobile. I just… it had to go.”

“You don’t have to explain yourself,” Danse replied, squeezing her shoulder reassuringly. “If this is what helps you release negative emotion, this is what you should do, and I will support it.”

They stood together in silence, basking in the warmth of the flames. Then, a hand came up to squeeze Danse’s, and his breathing stopped.

“You’re too good to me, Paladin,” Kori sighed, but she still didn’t look up to him.

“You’re struggling,” Danse argued. “There’s no such thing as ‘too good’ when you’re going through such tough emotions. I just… I just want you to be okay, but I know it’s not that simple. It’s not as simple as wishing and hoping. Both of us… _all_ of us… we have to stick together, we have to work on this together. You’ve faced a level of loss none of us could ever possibly match… but we hope to fill in some of the space left behind, if you’ll let us.”

And then Kori looked up to him, all damp eyes and trembling lips. Instantly, Danse was kneeling next to her, and it was all he could do _not_ to take her face in his hands and wipe away her tears. Instead, he simply kept his one hand on her shoulder.

“We won’t leave you,” he promised.

“You can’t make promises you can’t keep,” she croaked.

“Then we won’t leave you _alone_ ,” Danse countered. “Maybe some of us will come and go, but we will _not_ leave you alone. We can provide you with friends to last you until the end of your days, friends and freedom. You won’t be alone. _I_ will make sure of it.”

Kori inhaled sharply, holding back a sob. “That’s… that’s a hard promise to keep.”

“You say that like things are supposed to be easy,” he joked, cautious and watching Kori carefully.

But the vault dweller smiled, her laughter trembling and on the brink of crying, but she held herself together. Danse shook his head.

“It’s okay,” he whispered. “It’s just us. Please don’t hold it in, Kori. Just let it go. You don't have to be strong right now. I'm here to catch you. You can let go...”

And so she did, and Danse held her close, and despite his previous words, he wished, with all of his might, for Kori to be okay as he fought back tears of his own.

 

* * *

 

The end of the second day was peaceful, and the end of the third day saw promise. Kori’s posture had straightened, and Dogmeat was the first to sense improvement in her overall demeanor, running around her and barking excitedly. Everyone welcomed her to the pavilion with overly-excited shouting, and she took a spot next to Nick while Deacon and Mac continued their impromptu play from back when they had banded together to take down the Courser.

Danse was not among them; he was sitting down by the river again, flipping over the holotape he’d picked up from the floor in Kori’s house, overly-curious as to what was on it. It had a tape label-- “Hi honey!”-- but he wanted to know what was on it.

A part of that curiosity made him feel sick with himself-- it was Kori’s personal property, not some random raider or other resident of the Commonwealth, but at the same time… he felt like he knew so little about her, even after all the time they had spent together. She was a good soldier, and had been a good wife, from the sound of it, but beyond that… over the past couple of days, Danse had truly begun to question whether he really knew who she _was_ . Sure, he knew who she was _now,_ in this new world, but that was a lifespan of only about five or six months. Who was she _before_ the Great War? And would that knowledge help him better understand her now?

With a sigh, Danse stood, and continued to stare down at the holotape as he returned to the road through Sanctuary. Better to just return it to Kori before his thoughts and ideas could run away with him.

Partway up the street, he stopped short, and backtracked.

Hancock’s house had a terminal in it. It had been easy to miss during the day, but now that it was night, the machine stood out to him like a beacon, the square of green light beckoning to the overly curious Paladin.

Danse looked towards the direction of the pavilion. No one was coming this direction, it seemed, from where he was standing now.

Great. So he was going to be breaking and entering, alongside violating personal information. Wasn’t he a shining example to the Brotherhood of Steel.

Hancock’s door was unlocked, but the rancid smell of narcotics hit him like a freight train-- Danse actually stumbled back from the force of the scent hitting him, and groaned as his head spun. After coughing out the worst of it, he steadied his nerves, and charged inside.

Luckily, the scent was less powerful by the terminal-- this was where Hancock was sleeping, and on top of having a wide-open window, there was very little remnants of the powerful drugs in the air. And there was the terminal, unlocked and ready for use. After taking one last look at the holotape, Danse sighed, and pushed it into the slot at the side of the terminal. At the initial sound of a microphone squealing, Danse cringed, and rushed to turn down the volume.

“Oh, oops,” a voice laughed. Then, “No no no, little fingers away…”

Little fingers?

Danse didn’t have to wonder long. His heart and stomach dropped at the sound of a baby babbling. He didn’t have to think about who or what these voices belonged to. Not for a single moment.

‘ _Oh my God. Take the tape out_.’ But his arms would not move-- he was frozen still by what he was hearing. What he had stumbled upon.

“Hi Honey,” Gabriel said, and the man sounded like he was beaming. Danse could hardly breathe. “Listen. I don’t think Shaun and I need to tell you how great of a mother you are… but we’re going to anyways. You are kind, and loving…” the baby laughed, and so too did Gabriel. “And funny! That’s right… and patient. _So_ patient. Patience of a saint, as your mother used to say.”

‘ _Turn it_ **_off_ ** _, Danse._ ’

“Look, with Shaun, and us all being at home together… It’s been an amazing year. But I know that our best days are yet to come. There will be changes, sure. Things we’ll need to adjust to. I’ll rejoin the civilian workforce. You’ll shake off your law degree… But everything we do, no matter _how_ hard… we do it for our family.”

Danse actually wanted to vomit, his mind and his stomach sick and in turmoil.

“Now, say goodbye, Shaun.” The baby gurgled happily in the background. “Shaun… bye bye? Say bye b--”

He finally managed to eject the tape, and Danse tore it out quickly, stuffing it back in his pocket and stumbling out of Hancock’s house in a daze.

‘ _Mistake_ ,’ his mind gasped to him, ‘ _Mistake, that was a mistake_.’

He offered a weak wave towards the pavilion when people called his name, but he was inside of his own house just moments later, door shut and locked. He slid down onto the floor against the door, weak and shaking.

‘ _You can comfort Kori all you want. You can dry her tears and be there to hold her and care for her, but you’re never going to be Gabriel_ ,’ his mind screamed, and Danse brought a hand up to his mouth to stifle his overly-panicked breathing.  ‘ _You’re never going to be Gabriel. You’re never going to be the father of her son. You’re never going to be someone she loves the way she loved him_.’

He shook the last thought from his head, taking a deep, shuddering breath of cool air. That didn’t matter. She didn’t need to see him the way she saw Gabriel; they were friends. Friends with benefits, but friends all the same, and soldier and sponsor. Danse and Kori. Just… themselves.

Danse closed his eyes. Just friends. Always just friends. It was more than enough.

He forced himself to stand, using the door behind him for support. He reasoned with himself-- the holotape was a shock only because it helped him to realize just how severe the loss of her family truly was to her. It was obvious that, before the war, she had had a very good life. Now, that was all gone, and all that was left were ashes. Her emotions were completely justified, in the wake of such complete and utter destruction.

‘ _But phoenixes rise from the ashes of their_ _annihilation_ ,’ he thought to himself, tearing off his shirt and flopping bonelessly into his bed. The sounds of mirth and laughter from the pavilion were far, far away, and so unfitting for what his heart was feeling. ‘ _And Kori is the brightest damn flaming bird I’ve ever laid eyes on_.’


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things getting heated and intense here! And not in the sexy way! Oh no~ :3
> 
> I had to post this super quick and then leave the house, so minor edits may be made!

He honestly had _no_ idea why he had agreed to this.

Kori had asked him out with her, had informed him that she’d received word of a weapon they could utilize to the northeast to defend Sanctuary from attack. He’d agreed, initially, because he felt that it would be excellent time for the both of them to talk about what to do after they returned to the Brotherhood, and talk about how far they had come together, as a single unit.

What Danse hadn’t been counting on, was that Kori had also invited _Hancock_.

He gently pulled her aside from breakfast, and softly exclaimed, “ _Why!?_ Hancock? Kori, what the hell are you doing?!”

There were some things he would put up with for the sake of her health. This was not one of them.

The vault dweller frowned at him. “You guys looked like you were getting along okay,” she said. “I figured maybe you guys could use a little more one-on-one, understand each other better."

“Wh-- _no_ , are you insane?!” Danse was wide eyed, his hands tangling in his hair and sending it askew. “Hancock is a _Ghoul_ , Kori! I _have_ to draw the line here. I’ve made exceptions for you, left and right, but working alongside _him_ would be a complete and total erasure of everything I stand for!”

Kori frowned, and folded her arms. “You said you wanted to come on this field op with me, after I’d taken almost everyone else. Well, tomorrow’s our last full day here, and this is your only shot if you’re serious about helping me out. Besides, I think you’d _really_ like what we’re going after here. Put up with Hancock for just a couple hours, and you’ll get to see something really cool. Pre-war military grade tech we’re claiming for our own.”

As much as Danse despised Hancock, that idea _did_ sound appealing. He closed his eyes, and counted to ten, exhaling slowly.

“Keep that _thing_ on a short leash,” he commanded her at length.

Kori frowned, and was just about ready to chew Danse out, but before she could, the Ghoul in question was slinging an arm around Kori’s shoulder a tad roughly. “Heeeyyyy,” he snickered, and Danse could smell the Jet on his breath. “So are we gonna do this thing or what? Just an hour’s walk? I can do that. Northeast?”

“Northeast,” Kori confirmed, tension leaving her as Hancock dragged her away from Danse and down the street.

“Come on, Dansey-pants!” Hancock called. Danse was certain he was going to chew a hole through his lip. He wished, more than anything, to get in his Power Armor-- they were heading out into the Wasteland, unfriendly territory-- but with Hancock in their group, that idea was out of the question. He glanced towards his armor, which he had covered with a blank white sheet before Hancock had arrived on day one. With a frustrated sigh, he hoisted up his laser rifle, and fell in line close behind the other two.

“What exactly are we after?” Danse inquired, focusing on his breathing to keep his cool.

“You’ll see,” Kori teased. “Trust me, it’s cool.”

“Anything interesting on the way?” Hancock asked, kicking around a pebble like a hockey puck.

Quickly, Kori checked her Pip-Boy for him. “Nope. Jack shit. So maybe we can just talk, or if you’re _dying_ of boredom, Hancock, we can play a game.”

“Hey, talking’s fine,” he shrugged. “I just worry for Mr. Mopey behind us.” Hancock glanced over his shoulder at Danse. “Seriously, what’s up with you, man?”

Danse took a deep, shuddering breath. It was a combination of things, really. The lack of one-on-one time with Kori, being surrounded by a conglomeration of people he would normally never associate himself with under normal circumstances, hearing that damn holotape, being stuck in Sanctuary for as long as they had been…

He was homesick. He was homesick, and he felt unimportant and unsafe. And he missed having Kori to himself. He missed her attention.  _Her_.

“Personal matters,” was all he said aloud. “My mood will pick up eventually.”

The Ghoul shrugged, turning back to Kori, but stopping short. He knocked an arm into her, sending her flying back into Danse, and blew off a mole rat’s head, the beast having leapt into the air where Kori used to be. The body tumbled to the ground at Hancock's feet, and the Ghoul stumbled back to avoid being knocked over by the large body.

“There’s bound to be more somewhere,” he muttered as he regained his footing, reloading his shotgun.

Kori and Danse blinked, before looking at each other, and they separated quickly. Almost as soon as they did so, Kori shouted and pointed ahead and to the right. “We got a whole pack heading our way!” she exclaimed, and sure enough, there were eight or nine mole rats charging in their direction.

“Hell,” Hancock cursed. He kicked the first one to approach, and Kori followed through with a barrage of pistol bullets into its side until it fell still. “C’mere, you sons of bitches!”

Danse didn’t waste time to jump in himself. He rushed to Kori’s side, letting loose a volley of laser rounds into two mole rats who’d trained their sights on him. As he did so, he heard the woman next to him curse. “Ammo!” she shouted.

Danse’s eyes widened, and he reached into his own pack for some .45’s, but before he could find it, he heard the tell-tale rattle of an already fully loaded clip being tossed her way.

“Knock ‘em dead, sweetheart,” Hancock purred, before shooting another of the mutated creatures.

 _Sweetheart?_ Danse could feel himself twitch, even with the distraction of battle keeping him relatively steady. He snarled and mowed down a third mole rat, but that still left five of them, circling around them.

Next to him, Kori pulled out a sword from the sheathe on her back. “Cover me, boys,” she commanded, before running towards three of them straight ahead. One of the mole rats on the far left made a jump at her, but Danse knocked it out of the way. Before he could shoot it down, Hancock was already there, close enough that he was brushing Danse’s shoulder. Once it was dead, Danse jolted away, but the Ghoul didn’t notice, too busy shooting behind him without looking. The second mole rat, which had been jumping towards his back, fell dead.

The three Kori had been facing had severed limbs, one having had its head completely cut off. She only panted a little as she surveyed the damage, but it was short-lived. Soon enough, she was sheathing the weapon after confirming the creatures were dead, and Hancock held out his fist to her.

“Hey, nice going,” he praised her, and she laughed breathlessly as she bumped fists with him. “You haven’t lost your touch, vaultie. Still a defender of the people.”

“Guess so,” Kori turned to face Danse. “You did a good job, too. Thanks for keeping that one off my back; I saw that.”

The praise made Danse feel warm inside, and he relaxed some, pleased. “I’ll always have your back,” he promised, and Kori laughed and beamed.

“And _I’ll_ always have your front,” Hancock teased, punching her lightly in the stomach. The vault dweller made an “oof!” sound, but beyond that only laughed again, and the Ghoul did as well. And, just like that, the moment was stolen from Danse. He scowled as the three of them continued their walk to their destination, once again bitter that Kori's attention had been stolen from him.

Upon arrival to their destination, at first all Danse could see was junk, junk, and more junk, and a shack. He looked around momentarily, before--

“Oh, ho-lee shiet,” Hancock exclaimed, darting past Danse and to the left. He stopped short in front of a mass of metal, and upon joining the Ghoul, Danse’s eyes widened himself. Before them stood an inactive Sentry Bot, in near perfect condition. “Kori, you’ve been holding out on us! We should send this bitch to Goodneighbor, eh? Eh?”

“Nope, sorry, Hancock; I’ve already decided this baby’s for Sanctuary. We don’t have a lot of good defenses., and it’s usually only Preston and the other Minutemen. They could use the extra defense while I’m away.”

“Awe, come on, whatever happened to 'by the people for the people'?” he complained, still staring at the Sentry Bot even as the vault dweller began making her way towards the concrete shack.

“You’ve got Kleo!” she called back, and the Ghoul groaned.

“All that damn Assaultron wants is dick!”

Danse rolled his eyes, leaving Hancock to gawk at the robot, and he headed up the hill to join Kori in the shack. He glanced around, making certain that they were alone, before speaking his mind.

“You and Hancock certainly get along well,” he commented off-handedly.

“He was one of the first decent people I met when I left the vault,” she replied, ignoring the bite in his tone. Kori headed inside, and towards a terminal, which she began to hack. “I spent a week just getting wasted with him-- it was something I needed after emerging into _this_ shitstorm, and shockingly enough, he spent nearly that whole week with me. Of course he still had his mayoral duties to attend to, but he let me crash there and have my breakdowns. Thing is, we agreed _not_ to talk about that week ever again. We pretend it’s not how we met."

Danse furrowed his brow, and before he could ask why, Kori continued anyways. "The only reason I’m telling _you_ is because I need you to understand _why_ he means so much to me. Hancock is why I’m still here and not dead in a ditch somewhere.”

She made it through the terminal security, and smirked as she was given access to all of the Sentry Bot’s functions. Danse sighed, and ran a hand down his face.

“Sure, he helped you. That’s good. That’s fine. But to continue interaction with him is… I-- I just don’t know what to make of it. You’re better than him. You _deserve_ better friends than some lowlife drug addict Ghoul.”

He regretted his words instantly when he saw her shoulders tense up. Slowly, Kori came to face him, and there was a storm in her green eyes that he had never been witness to before. Something that frightened him. She stepped up to him, slowly, but he backed away, until he was pressed into a wall.

“Danse,” she growled, and her voice was so unfamiliar, he almost thought, momentarily, that this wasn’t Kori, this was a Synth, and this was how he died. “Danse. It’s not about the friends I deserve, it’s about the friends I _want_ . It’s about the people who have stuck by me through my best _and_ my worst. It’s about the people who have opened themselves up to me, have made themselves so vulnerable, offered me their heart full-well knowing I could crush it in an instant.”

She placed her hands on the wall to either side of him, and that was when his body started sending mixed messages. This was _not_ the kind of situation where he should be getting turned on-- Kori was completely serious in her anger-- and yet her domineering presence simply had that effect on him, since they were alone, and it had been some time since they'd last been together. Danse swallowed audibly as she continued.

“Hancock is _all_ of those things, and more. I’ve about had it with your shitty attitude towards my friends. If you have a problem with that, you can have _this_.”

She shoved something into his hands, but he didn’t dare look down at it yet. It wasn’t until she pulled away and walked back to the terminal to finish her work, that he stared at what she had given him. His throat went tight and his heart thudded painfully in his ribcage at the implications of the object in his extended hands.

It was a Vertibird signal grenade.

He had just gathered his senses again, from being shocked and hurt and confused, when Kori walked out of the shed. Outside, Hancock yelped in surprise as the Sentry Bot came to life. “We’re done here,” she called to everyone present, and distantly, he heard Hancock ask, “Jesus, what crawled up your vagina..?”

Danse closed his eyes.

 _‘Breathe. Breathe. Things are rough, but you’ve got to breathe. It’s just a phase. It’s just a phase. She'll get over it. Things will be okay again soon. Ad Victoriam. Ad victoriam._ ’

When he felt sufficiently in control of himself, he hurried out of the structure to rejoin Kori and Hancock. The Sentry Bot was following dutifully behind, all rumbling parts and mechanical clanging. Hancock was sitting on one of its legs, straddling it like a horse, and he smirked up at Danse like a king on a magnificent steed.

One more day, Danse reminded himself. That was all he had to suffer through. Just one more day. He could do this. He could keep himself under control. And then, everything would go back to normal. Even as he found himself beginning to tear at the seems, he would not break.

 

* * *

 

It was the fifth and final day when Hancock finally got curious about the great big sheet over the Power Armor station, and tore it off. The resulting indignant shout got everyone’s attention, easily. Even the new Sentry Bot turned its head, but upon sensing no immediate threat, resumed its dormant state at the bridge into Sanctuary.

Danse and Kori had been finishing painting the bedroom in her house when the sound jarred them out of their work.

“ _Kori!_ ” the Ghoul bellowed, stumbling back from the revelation. “What the _fuck_ is this!? _Farnsworth!_ ”

The two of them exchanged wide eyed glances, knowing exactly what had him so worked up. They dropped the brushes immediately and rushed out of the house.

His shouting drew a crowd-- nearly everyone in Sanctuary came, save for Nick, Codsworth, Dogmeat, and MacCready. Curie attempted to approach the Ghoul, speaking soft things, but he only growled at her, which caused her to yelp and retreat. When he set his eyes on Kori, he marched directly up to her, and pointed at the suit.

“Who’s fucking suit is that,” he demanded to know, almost directly in her face.

The vault dweller remained steadfast, unflinching. “It’s mine,” she said. Danse, who was to the back of the crowd, blinked. “I killed a Paladin for it.”

‘ _What? No!_ ’ Danse knew she was defending him, but to shit on the Brotherhood like that? That was unacceptable!

“Bullshit!” Hancock was seething, and he paced in front of Kori. All of Danse’s instincts were kicking into high gear, after he had forced them into dormancy for so long. He was ready to attack at a moment’s notice, to protect all humans present from the Ghoul threat. Still, he held himself back. “Who’s fucking suit!?”

“I _did_ kill him, Hancock,” she countered again. “He attacked Nick, so I shot him dead. Simple as that. And I’m not one to let Power Armor go to waste, or fall into the wrong hands.”

“More like you hoard it,” the Ghoul scoffed. He turned around, staring at the suit of armor and continuing to pace. “But Brotherhood armor… no, Kori. I’ve heard the rumors. I kept my mouth shut because I've got faith in you, but this... this makes me suspicious all over again. Yeah. I've heard the rumors. They’ve been going around. Some of my people have seen you _with_ a Paladin. Traveling together. I kept my mouth shut, it wasn’t none of my business, but _this_ …” He continued to rant as Deacon cautiously approached. “This is… this just isn’t you!”

“Hancock, take it easy,” Deacon begged. “It’s just Power Armor. It’s not gonna hurt you if nobody’s in it.”

“That’s easy for _you_ to say, Railroad. You can waltz around like you own the Commonwealth, but if me, or any of my kind, poke their head around a corner, we’re roadkill to these guys. Hell, not even that.”

“Okay, but the fact of the matter is,” Preston said, shooting a look to Danse that said, ‘ _Bail_ ’, “there’s no BOS soldiers here. That’s pretty obvious. It seems to me like Kori’s story checks out. She eliminated a threat, and took the spoils. Easy.”

Danse took a hesitant, uncertain step backwards. Maybe he _should_ leave, despite his desire to protect Kori from this madman.

“Easy? No… killing a Brotherhood soldier is _not_ easy. But befriending one… or, I guess, letting them _manipulate_ you…” Hancock fell still in his pacing, before turning to face the armor again. Danse didn’t like the way his shoulders shook with a silent chuckle as he beheld the suit of Power Armor again.

“You’re out of line, Hancock,” Kori stated, voice booming and carrying over the street. “Just put the sheet back on. It’ll be gone and out of your sight by morning.”

Hancock glanced back at her, before turning back around. He slung his hands around his back, one hand coming to hold at one wrist.

“Well, I mean…” he approached the armor slowly with a shrug. “Kori never… _uses_ Power Armor, she’s just… a collector. So if it… really doesn’t belong to anybody here, nobody would mind if I just… took it for myself--”

Danse lost sense of his thought when Hancock placed a hand on the chestplate. Blood rushed to his head, and he wasn’t aware of himself bursting through the crowd, shoving people aside and drawing his laser rifle.  _'He did not just do that. He did **not** just touch my Power Armor like it was fucking  **his**.'_

“Get your _hands off my Power Armor, you filthy animal!_ ”

“I _fucking knew it!_ ” Hancock roared, drawing a pistol, and everything devolved from that point.

“Danse!” Kori screamed, throwing her arms around him and yanking him back and away from Hancock. Deacon, on the other hand, went directly in for the kill, tackling Hancock to the ground. The pistol in his hand misfired, and there was a shout of pain from someone somewhere. After, there was a responding cry of alarm, and then Curie rushed Cait away from the hellshow, holding a hand to her bleeding shoulder as they retreated quickly.

“I fucking knew it was you, from the goddamn moment I met you I knew something was off!” Hancock continued to scream, struggling in Deacon’s grip.

“You _goddamn freak, I’ll kill you!_ ” Danse snarled and broke free from Kori’s grasp. He began to march towards the Ghoul again, but then Preston was there, a deeply apologetic look on his face as he hit Danse square in the nose with the butt of his laser musket. The Paladin went reeling, blood gushing from his nose, and he tumbled onto the ground. He rolled from his back onto his stomach, letting the blood drip into the dirt as he tried to stop the spinning of his vision.

“Kori!” The vault dweller flinched at her name from raspy, gravelly lips. “I fucking trusted you! I trusted you, and you brought this fucking nazi into our group?!”

“ _I trust Danse,_ ” she spat, as Piper and Preston rushed to restrain the dazed man. “He’s not like the rest of the Brotherhood of Steel.”

“Yeah? It sure don’t look that way from where I’m getting my face _ground into the fucking dirt_ ,” he spat, trying to buck Deacon off of him. “He drew first, Farnsworth. Whatever you do with him past this point, best you fucking remember that in the future.”

Deacon looked up to Kori. lips drawn down in a frown, and he shrugged. “Whisper… Hancock’s got a point. Danse drew first. We all saw it.”

She turned around, to find Preston and Piper giving the same upset looks to each other. Danse's blood stained the ground beneath him, face a mix of dirt and red. Kori’s lips flapped, and she shook her head. She glanced away from the Paladin.

“Fuck, I know. I’m sorry. I thought… I thought he was more mature. I guess I was wrong.”

“What the _hell_ is going on over here.”

The six of them glanced up to the sound of a seventh voice. Nick had arrived without warning, and he stared at them with a burning look, almost as intense as a bomb. He stared down at Danse, clearly unimpressed and disappointed, but it only made the Paladin struggle more.

Piper explained. “Hancock found Danse’s armor, and he weeded Danse out as the owner. All he did was touch the damn armor! And Danse acted like he was going to blow up the damn thing!”

“Aw, hell. Really, Danse? We _just_ talked about this.”

“ _Go to hell_ ,” Danse spat, and Nick frowned down at him, looking hurt, before addressing the rest of the group again.

“He’s had a lifetime of bullshit shoved in that thick skull of his,” the Synth said as he knelt down in front of Danse. “Lies about people like me, like Hancock. Truths warped to fit the view and the message that Maxson intends to spread. But I think he’s starting to get the picture.”

Again, Hancock snarled. “He just tried to kill me--”

“ _Threaten_ you,” Nick corrected the Ghoul. “Honestly, I’d point a gun at you, too, if you put your grubby mitts on my stuff. Danse wouldn’t have shot unless he thought you actually would. If you’re a Ghoul and you want to survive a Brotherhood encounter, the number one thing to remember, is to _don’t touch their prized possessions_. You know that, John. You brought this on yourself.”

“Right,” Piper agreed, “but that doesn’t change what Danse did.”

“No. It doesn’t. You’re right, Piper. He did still overreact, but we all know, if he _really_ followed Brotherhood scripture to a T, I wouldn’t be having this conversation with _any_ of you, and Hancock would be a bloody pulp in the corner.”

They fell silent in hesitant, mutual agreement. Nick brushed some of Danse’s hair out of his face, before standing up. He took a long, slow drag of his light.

“He’s learning,” he reiterated again. “He knows who the real enemy is. He _knows_ it’s not us. He just has to decide when he’s going to grow up and start behaving like a friend, and not a begrudging ally.”

The old Synth turned to Kori.

“In the meantime, until he _can_ learn, I think it’d be best if he cleared out.”

“I’ll send him to Red Rocket,” Kori promised, “and I’ll watch him carefully while he gathers his things. I want to apologize for his behavior-- this was a mistake on _my_ behalf. It won’t be repeated.”

Danse closed his eyes, fighting back tears of frustration, the sick pounding of his heart, and that sick voice in his head that screamed, unsatisfied, at the lack of bloodshed.

 

* * *

 

“I _cannot_ fucking believe you,” Kori hissed once the two of them were finally in the privacy of the Red Rocket. Danse stepped out of his Power Armor silently, heading to the sink in the garage to clean off the dried blood and dirt from his face. “Do you have _any_ idea what you’ve done?!”

The Paladin remained silent, marching around in search of a clean cloth. When he found one, he headed back to the sink, getting to work on himself immediately. His nose wasn’t broken, but it was going to bleed and ache like hell for a while.

“Fucking _answer_ me!” Kori exclaimed, hovering over his shoulder.

“I followed my training.”

“Oh, okay, good, you _followed your training_ ,” Kori shouted, throwing up her arms. “Your training nearly got Hancock killed today!”

“Oh, so this is about Hancock,” Danse snarled, slapping off the tap and throwing down his rag in frustration. “No, don’t worry about how he was violating my personal space--”

“He did that because he _knew_ it would get a rise out of whoever it belonged to! If you had just kept your mouth shut-- Hancock doesn’t hesitate, Danse, I don’t know _why_ he did today, but if you were anyone other than my friend, you’d have a bullet in your head.”

“Look, the only reason I’m getting angry is because I care so much about you. It hurts me when I see you making such a terrible mistake. I’ve met a _lot_ of Ghouls in my line of duty, but I have _never_ met a Ghoul as animalistic as Hancock. He barely even deserves the shame of being _called_ a Ghoul.”

“But it’s _not_ shameful!” Kori pointed back towards Sanctuary. “Being a Ghoul is _just that; a title_ . He’s still human, genetically speaking, he’s just a little degraded! So _what?!_ So what, Danse?”

“So what? Kori, he’s an insult to us!” Danse gestured to himself. “He’s a reminder of our shortcomings, _our_ ancestors’ failures! His existence is an insult to how far we’ve come in bettering ourselves as a race--”

“Danse, I fucking was _born and raised_ in the past, and humans have _not changed_ . _Nothing_ about Hancock is an insult, and if you think he is, if you _really_ think that he’s a reminder of how _my generation_ failed, then you need to think about how you can make up for their mistakes instead of throwing the blame on people who weren’t even _born_ in their time!”

“You’re not understanding what I’m saying! Jesus, your level of cooperation has been so low, I’m honestly at a loss for words!”” Danse shouted. “We need to eradicate any and all indications of the nuclear war that devastated the planet so that future generations don’t get the same idea! Not only that, but Ghouls are _suffering_ in their existence! They--”

“Did you ever _ask_ the Ghouls what _they_ wanted?!”

“That’s not necessary, we already know--”

“Just because existing is painful doesn’t mean you don’t want to live, Danse! _You_ made me see that!”

That finally caused him to shut up. Kori waved her hands around frantically.

“I still hate being here. I still think about finding some high place to fling myself from, that hasn’t been fixed in just one single stupid _week_ ! But _you_ are the one who made me see that so long as I have people who care about me, I’m going to be okay. I can have my low moments, and I can regret the past. I can have my doubts about the future and about myself, and I’ll always have people who will pick me up from my own ashes, even if I can’t fly.”

Again, she pointed out the open garage door, where it was beginning to rain.

“Hancock? Hancock relates to that. He is _sick,_ he’s a _drug addict_ , he’s a _pervert_ and a _liar_ and a _thief_ and every single bad thing you want to think of him. Hancock _sucks_ , morality-wise, okay? I know that, _everyone_ knows that. And he _hurts_ . Every day, he’s in pain, and he’s nauseous, just like every other Ghoul, and he is _fucking thrilled_ to be on this planet. He wakes up in the morning and after he pukes his guts out, he puts on his coat and he gives uplifting speeches to the people that purists like _you_ have shoved around and made to feel worthless for _years_ . Hancock _lives_ to lift people up from themselves. And for you to disregard that and to simplify him to just some filthy Ghoul? For you to do that to _any_ Ghoul or Synth without actually _knowing_ them?”

She recoiled from him, offering up only a look of pure disgust.

“You’re no better than the Institute in their quest to purify humanity.”

Danse shook his head, aghast that Kori would use the same words that Nick, a _Synth_ , had used on him a few weeks ago when they had first met The Brotherhood was  _nothing_ alike the Institute. “Your words are noble, but you’re still heavily misguided.”

“ _Fuck you,_ Danse!”

“You’re supposed to be representing the Brotherhood! Why don’t you start _acting_ like it?”

“Because it’s _wrong_ , and Maxson can go ride a Super Mutant cock for making you and all the other soldiers think this level of bigotry and hatred is okay and noble!”

Kori shoved into Danse’s chest, sending him stumbling backwards. His eyes widened in surprise, before he steeled his expression. His nostrils flared.

“You’re smarter than this, Kori. I know you are.”

The woman narrowed her eyes, before turning tail and walking out of the garage. Danse followed her to the threshold, and watched helplessly, angrily, as she walked outside and back towards Sanctuary.

“That’s it?” Danse shouted after her. “You think you can just walk away?! I expected better from you, Knight.”

She offered him no response. Not even a rude gesture, or a scream of frustration. Danse shook his head, and slammed the button to close the garage, staring after her until the metal door blocked his view, and he was alone.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome back! have you had a nice day? I died when I got home from college and now here we are!
> 
> This evening, I start a new job, which may interfere with my ability to upload in the future. I will do my best to still adhere to a daily upload schedule, but there might be a day in the next five days where I can't get to it, and for that I deeply apologize in advance D:

“I need your help.”

Her voice came from out of the blue, after a week and a half of silence. Danse tensed, but didn’t look up from his coffee at the mess hall table he was sitting at. He didn’t know if he could bring himself to look up at her, anyways. Not after what had happened when they had arrived.

Their return to the Prydwen had been shared in silence. Danse was ashamed with himself when she arrived to Red Rocket looking exhausted and bitter, and she had spoken not a single word to him as she threw out the Vertibird signal grenade. Danse made conversation with the pilot, but Kori remained steadfastly silent. Upon arrival to the great Brotherhood airship, she turned to him with tired, regretful eyes. The flight deck was quiet, and they were alone.

“Until I know we can stand on equal ground again, I think it would be better for us to… split up. Work on our own projects. Figure out if… figure out what we want as individuals.”

He could almost _hear_ his heart crack apart further than it already had been. It felt like a break-up, even if they weren't in a relationship. He forced himself to remain stoic, not to break. Not out in the open like this. But it was a task he struggled with more than he would like to admit. He’d opened himself up to Kori, and she to him. They’d had a seemingly unbreakable friendship, and now, she was pushing him away.

This hurt more than the day Cutler went missing.

“I understand,” he sighed, and had to refrain from crouching down to be eye-level with her. After a week of being out of his Power Armor, he felt too tall. Too big. Bulky, wrong. “But if Maxson wants us to work together, will you at least _try_ to be cordial towards me? I think we’re both worked up, and we just need to talk this out, if given the time or chance.”

“There’s nothing to talk about,” she replied, brow furrowed. “You pointed a loaded weapon off of safety at arguably my best friend. Regardless of his race, that’s not okay. I need you to understand that. That's wrong, and that's the end of the conversation.”

“With that argument,” Danse said, “the Brotherhood wouldn’t be able to operate at all. Everyone is _someone’s_ best friend. We wouldn't be able to shoot _anyone_.”

“You know what I mean, and you know that’s bullshit,” she hissed, lowering her voice. “You need to start understanding that I’m not going to put up with the Brotherhood’s bullshit ideologies from you, or from _anyone_. The only reason I’m still here is to help bring down the Institute for destroying my life, and because the Brotherhood is the best way to do it.”

“Kori, please,” Danse begged, “I know that you’re better than this. You _know_ that Ghouls and Synths are a threat to humanity-- thinning out their numbers now prevents us from being overwhelmed in the future.”

“Maybe I should be thinning out the Brotherhood myself,” Kori spat, and Danse felt as if her words had significant physical impact. The breath was knocked from his lungs. “You fucking zealots are killing good, innocent people when you damn those oh-so threatening non-humans. Please, enlighten me on what sane Synth or Ghoul killed a good person, and everyone of their same race thought it was a good thing, or said, ‘yes, that’s what we _all_ believe in.’ Tell me, Danse. And then tell me about all the Brotherhood raids on settler farms, all the interventions with the Railroad freeing innocent Synths, all the Ghoul violence, _tell me--_ ”

“ _Stand down,_ Knight Farnsworth.”

Kori growled. “Oh no, you don’t get to pull rank on me, not when we’re talking about _this_ ; that’s a low blow and you _know_ it.”

“You’re getting too heated about this,” he pointed out.

“Of course I’m getting too heated! We’re talking about the worth of people’s _lives_ here! ‘Thinning out numbers’ is genocide, Danse, _genocide_ . My great great grandfather fought in a war literally to stop _that exactly_. I won’t stand by and let you or the Brotherhood do the same now!”

Danse flared his nostrils, and leaned down towards Kori to whisper harshly at her. “We’re trying to preserve humanity! But I know now that I shouldn’t expect someone from such a self-destructive generation who mirrors their behavior to understand that, I suppose--”

The hand across his face came as a shock to both of them. Kori recoiled and curled in on herself immediately after smacking him, eyes wide and jaw agape.

“Fuck, _shit_ ,” she cursed, stuttering and unsure of what to do with herself to rectify the situation. She held her hand as if she'd burned it. “I didn’t mean-- Danse, I--”

“Just stay away from me, soldier,” he demanded, nostrils flaring as he stared out over the sea to the east. He remained stoic, hiding just how much her actions wounded him emotionally. “Before I say or do something I regret.”

She nodded quickly, before turning around sharply and heading inside the command deck.

Danse remained on the flight deck, letting the wind wash through his hair and standing against the railing with his eyes closed. Shortly after, he sensed a presence standing next to him, but they said nothing, and he said nothing in return. But the silence didn’t last long-- a familiar, gravelly voice cleared itself, and then Arthur said, “Women…” in an accusatory tone.

Danse nodded his agreement, not yet opening his eyes. Instead of continuing the rant Arthur clearly wanted to start, however, he remained professional. “She’s… mentally stable enough to return to active duty, but I fear she’ll be… less than polite. I apologize in advance; I claim full responsibility for her current behavior. I did not monitor her as closely as I should have.”

The Elder sighed-- a sign to Danse that he was doing something the other man found silly, or sometimes endearing.

“Danse, I’ve always known that she supported the rights of non-humans.”

Finally, Danse’s eyes snapped open. He turned to stare down at the Elder, who was looking up at him with a bitter smile. The man had a cigarette in between two fingers, and he took a long, slow inhale of the toxins within before speaking around the smoke.

“Do you think I’ve been able to run a successful army for as long as I have without having certain instincts? From the moment she boarded my ship, I knew she would cause problems. I knew she would make you doubt yourself.”

“No,” Danse promised. “I haven’t doubted myself, _or_ the Brotherhood, for a single moment. I’ve just been frustrated that I can’t make her understand what we’re fighting for.”

“And you never will be able to,” Arthur informed him. He sighed, placing his hands behind his back. “So long as she helps us with reconstructing Liberty Prime and destroying the Institute, she’s a valuable asset, but little more. At this point, I hardly consider her a soldier worthy of any rank or title. Once the Institute is destroyed, it’s likely that either she will leave us, or I will honorably discharge her. Such is the way of war. I cannot afford her outlook to further affect you or other soldiers as it already has.”

Danse frowned, hiding his disapproval at the Elder’s plan. Kori was an _excellent_ soldier, and regardless of her view on the Commonwealth and its inhabitants, she didn’t deserve to be kicked out once she had expended her usefulness. “If you’re so worried about how her views could affect mine, why did you allow me to continue sponsoring her?”

Arthur shrugged. “Because you asked. It’s as simple as that. I asked if you felt that she was a distraction or a threat, and you said no, so I did not press the matter. I have full confidence in your abilities, Danse, both physical and mental. You are the best soldier I have ever had the pleasure of befriending and leading, and while I want what’s best for you, I also want you to have control over your own soldiers as well. You’re very well capable of leading your own squadron, even if it costs you dearly, like Kori has.”

Danse opened his mouth to argue, but there was nothing he could or wanted to say. He sighed and drooped his head.

“I just don’t want to lose her like Cutler,” he confessed on a quiet murmur.

The Elder’s expression immediately softened, and he tugged lightly on Danse’s Power Armored arm. “Let’s get you out of that thing and get you something to eat. We can talk in my quarters.”

That was the end of that.

That brought them to now. Danse, staring into his coffee, and Kori, at his side, standing at rigorous attention. She was once again in her BOS uniform, after so long out of it. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen her wearing it. He set his lips in a thin line; as much as he missed her and wanted them to work together again, she’d severely wounded his pride, insulted his way of life. He wasn’t sure if he was ready to forgive her yet.

“Is it for the Brotherhood?” he inquired, taking a long, slow sip of his drink.

“It is,” she confirmed. “It’s related to Liberty Prime.”

Ah. So she had been briefed. Maybe had even participated in some of its building. Danse had done his fair share of the construction, but he and Kori hadn’t seen each other during that whole timespan. It’d helped him to reconnect with some of his old friends, however, which he was grateful for… even if it didn’t feel the same. Normally, they would be able to have pleasant, civil conversations. Now, Danse couldn’t think of a topic he wanted to focus on with anyone. Even his usual default conversation of how bitter and disgusting Ghouls were didn't hold as much interest in his mind It usually left awkward silences. He wasn’t sure what had changed, or if he was just off because of his estrangement with Kori. Either way, as of late, he'd found that his unwavering loyalty to the Brotherhood was... well, it hadn't been shaken, and he would still fight to the death for Arthur Maxson, but... there just wasn't the same feeling in it anymore.

“I’m not a mechanic,” he stated simply. “Whatever you need help with, I’m certain Ingram can instruct you on what needs to be done.”

“I don't need a mechanic. I need a companion.”

That caused him to finally look up at the vault dweller. He recoiled slightly upon seeing her weary and dead expression. She wasn’t making eye contact with him, either. Again, some deep part of him wanted to tug her close. To ask her what was wrong, how he could help. To kiss all over her face and her neck, to praise her on how strong she was…

He quelled that thought with a clearing of his throat. “For what purpose, may I ask?”

Kori folded her arms, staring down the length of her own torso. “Liberty’s missing his nukes. I offered to run down to the Super-Duper market and pick some up, but they’re out of stock, so we have to find a bomb site in the Glowing Sea and get ‘em right from the source. Quinlan sent out some Scribes to meet us at the edge with further instructions.”

Danse set down his mug. “And… you really want me to help you?”

Finally, Kori looked over at Danse. Her smile was small, and sad.

“You’re my friend, Danse. My friend, and my sponsor. And I trust you to have my back, no matter what. Even if we disagree on things, I know that you’ll keep me safe, and I’ll do the same for you. And I am so forever grateful for that trust.”

Why did she have to be so… _nice?_ It tugged on his heart in an all too painfully familiar way; after having been without her for nearly two weeks, _aching_ for her warmth and her kindness, it was suffocating. And despite the heart-to-heart he and Maxson had shared, some part of Danse knew that Kori _was_ a good person, no matter how the other man despised her. That she only wanted what was best for him. For _everyone_. It was a behavior that smelled of sickly sweet honey and carefully preserved pre-war marshmallows.

He wanted to die in it. He _wanted_ to, so badly.

“Do you… think we’ll be able to cooperate?” he asked carefully, not yet allowing himself to jump right back into her company.

“I _know_ we will.” Kori held out her hand to him, and Danse wanted to shout in elation at the friendly gesture. He grasped her hand firmly, and she yanked him to his feet and patted him on the back.

“Go get your Power Armor,” she instructed him, smiling broadly, and he swore his heart was going to take flight at that look directed at him. “We’ve got more radiation to power through.”

Danse gave her a big, warm smile. “Ad Victoriam?”

He frowned a little when she shook her head, but her next words negated his disapproval.

“Ad Vita. To life.”

 

* * *

 

The Vertibird took them just to the edge of the Glowing Sea, and there, they saw the temporary camp the Scribes had made for this mission. Danse and Kori hopped out together, and marched directly towards Haylen, who was leading the current operation. She looked very pleased with herself, and her excitement only grew once she saw Danse and Kori. She darted towards the Power Armor clad soldiers.

“It’s good to see you again, Knight!” she exclaimed, and she offered a similar greeting to Danse. “You’ve come a long way since you stumbled into the Cambridge police station.”

“Oh, you have no idea,” Kori chuckled. “But thanks, Haylen. I assume the place is still in one piece.”

“We’re doing the best that we can,” the Scribe continued. “We’ve had the occasional Synth attack, but so far we’ve been able to keep them from overrunning us. Thanks to the reinforcements and the air support, I’d say that site was secure.”

The vault dweller frowned. “What about those Feral Ghouls? They still a problem?”

“With a Vertibird at our disposal?” Haylen shook her head. “Not a chance. Anyway, I know you don’t have time for small talk, so I’ll get right to it. I’ve had the men set up the equipment we’ll need to pinpoint you once you’ve found the bombs. We’ve rigged up this distress pulser to emit a unique tone that we’ll be listening for. When you find the bombs, plant the Pulser, and we’ll handle the rest. After that, you should probably head back to Proctor Ingram and bring her your report.”

Haylen handed the distress pulser to Danse, who carefully stored it away for future use.

“Look… I know you two have been through the Glowing Sea before but… try to keep an eye on your geiger counter. If you don’t, the radiation will cook you from the inside out.”

Danse and Kori exchanged looks, laughing nervously and knowingly, before slipping on their Power Armor helmets.

It only took about 3/4ths of the day to find what they were looking for, given that they had scouted out the Glowing Sea so thoroughly during their first visit. Upon arrival, the two of them realized that they had been here before, had cleared it out in search of Virgil on their first visit to the Glowing Sea. They looked to each other with relief, before heading inside.

One quick elevator ride and a trudge through underground tunnels later, the duo found themselves before a great red blast door. The vault dweller approached it, humming, and the sound was static. She attempted to dig her fingers into it, upon seeing no terminal, in an effort to tear it open, to no avail. Danse watched Kori struggle, for a moment, before redirecting his attention to the smaller, human-sized door to the left. He cleared his throat the catch Kori’s attention, before gesturing to it with a nod of his head.

“... Oh. Silly me,” Kori laughed, walking up the stairs to it. She stepped over the corpse without really paying much attention to who or what it was, opening the door and walking inside like she owned the compound. Danse followed closely behind, but ended up stopping very abruptly so as not to run into her when she did the same. He didn’t ask why they had stopped, but a moment later, Kori pulled out her laser rifle, and Danse did the same.

Eventually, he heard it. There were footsteps coming from the room ahead. Measured. Human. _Hopefully_ human. Hopefully friendly.

Soon a man walked around the corner, dressed in rags and a random assortment of armor. The both of them knew straight away that this was a Child of Atom. The man approached slowly, carefully, with a measured smile. He stopped before Kori, hands clasped behind his back.

“State your purpose, stranger,” he said, and Kori glanced back at Danse. “You walk on Atom’s hallowed ground.”

“I’m… looking for some bombs. Nuclear bombs.”

"You trivialize that which resides here,” the cultist frowned. “This place is holy. The Children of Atom have sworn to guard this place until the time of the Great Divide. _None_ shall enter.”

Kori made a head movement that was synonymous with rolling her eyes. “Well. Talking to you is pointless.”

The Child of Atom’s voice grew in volume, his holier-than-thou demeanor quickly disintegrating. “All your petty deeds will become _pointless_ when Atom returns, when the Great Divide cleanses this world and all in it. You will leave this place, or face Atom’s wrath!”

Now Kori was angry as well. She hoisted up her weapon higher, and Danse wished that the hallway wasn’t so narrow, so he could get in a good shot or two himself in the fight he knew was coming. “This is your last warning,” the vault dweller warned. “Show me the nukes, _or else_.”

“No! Your time on this world has ended! Face Atom’s Wrath… and _despair!_ ”

“Gimme a break,” Kori grumbled, before knocking the arm of her Power Armor into his nose, sending the man flying back. Once he was on the floor, she aimed her laser rifle at his head and fired shots into it until he stopped moving.

“I’ll never understand these cultist’s obsession with radiation,” Danse murmured.

The vault dweller nodded her agreement, but the both of them froze simultaneously at the sound of a robotic voice rushing out of the room ahead.

“You there. Stop. Your presence is not authorized.”

“Shit, back up, back up back up back up,” Kori commanded, turning sharply and pushing Danse back out the way they came. He followed her command instantly, rushing back down the steps. Kori hurried after, but a cry of anguish left her when a sharp laser beam shot to her back. Her figure was outlined in a red halo, the brightness of which only grew, and there was a hissing sound and a leaking of radioactive fluid from the back of her Power Armor.

Danse didn’t hesitate-- he rushed back to her, pulling her down the stairs, only to find her Power Armor had locked up, the core in the back destroyed.

“Shit!” Danse looked up, coming face to face with the Assaultron that had immobilized the vault dweller.

“Sir,” the bot said, “this is a restricted area. Vacate immediately.”

“Go to hell!” he shouted, before firing at the thing and rushing towards it. He bashed into the robot, sending it stumbling backwards, and then he shot at its legs to cripple it.

Danse made quick work of the Assaultron, and all the while, Kori managed to worm her way out of her Power Armor. The vault dweller cringed, hissing and falling back against the wall, head clunking back noisily. She remained there, slowly injecting herself with a stimpack, until Danse had eliminated the robot threat and rushed to her side.

“Are you alright?” he asked, looking her over.

“Back’s burned,” she croaked, also fumbling for a Radaway. “Laser fucked up the Power Core, I think the Power Armor’s trashed. I’ve probably got radiation burns all along my spine.”

Fuck, that wasn’t good. Danse took a hold of the small woman in his mechanical hands, turning her to one side to take a look. She relaxed a little when he only made a slightly concerned hum, but she couldn't see the deep cringe on his face at the torn fabric and the bubbled skin. “It doesn’t look as bad as it must feel. Yes, there’s definitely radiation burns. But I think that packet of Radaway will have you covered in preventing any long-term damage.”

“Will the scars look cool?” she inquired as she jammed the needle from the IV bag into her arm.

“You scars always look beau-- cool. They’re always cool.” Danse blinked in surprise at himself, and cleared his throat. “You go ahead and recover here. I’m gong to search the cultist’s body for any hint on how to get into the bomb room.”

Kori gave him a semi-weak thumbs up, and the Paladin disengaged himself to do the task.

The Child of Atom had some orders on a note, which Danse didn’t bother to read, and then he found the password for a terminal. Assuming it was in the room the man had come from, Danse headed inside. The turret that opened fire on him was only a minor annoyance, and he took it down in just a matter of seconds. WIth the terminal’s password in hand, Danse was easily able to find what he was looking for. He entered the command to open the doors, and sure enough, the great red blast doors slowly began to open. The Paladin smiled, pleased at having completed the task himself, and returned to Kori.

The vault dweller was back to her feet, in the middle of throwing on a shirt over her Brotherhood of Steel uniform to cover the torn back and the sensitive lesions. She turned around to face Danse, forcing a smile through what was likely excruciatingly sensitive pain.

“Shall we go inspect the fruits of our labor?” she asked, sounding breathless.

“If you think you’re up for it,” Danse said slowly, narrowing his eyes at her. “You’ve sustained substantial injury, and I can handle things from here.”

“No, I’m fine,” Kori insisted, making a point of standing straighter, more confidently. “Let’s take a look at what we’ve found.”

She lead the way out of the small room, Danse close behind her, instinctively wanting to protect her. To keep her safe from further harm. But she stood tall, walking proudly through the red blast doors and into the room beyond. Her shoulders dropped once faced with the thousands of mini nuclear bombs housed within.

“Jesus,” she whispered, staring all around, “we’re gonna get to fire these things like pistol bullets. Jesus.”

“It will be impressive,” Danse agreed, placing a careful hand on her shoulder. He looked down at the smaller woman, and noted the sparkle in her eyes-- something that had been missing ever since her return from the Institute. For the first time in weeks, her eyes sparkled, even through the pain of her oversensitive skin, the weariness of her bones, the loss she had endured. Kori turned to look to Danse, and her beaming smile blinded him, momentarily. She placed her hands on her hips and puffed out her chest.

"You know," she said to him confidently, "I always did think we made a pretty good team."

His chest bloomed with pride, and love.

And then all at once, his eyes widened in realization.

… _fuck_. Love.

He didn't have time for his expression to give anything more away about what he was thinking. Danse was yanked violently from his thoughts by a low, grating robotic tone from the far end of the room.

“ _Hostiles in area. Threat level: Red._ ”

Danse and Kori both froze, turning slowly away from each other and towards the source of the voice. At the far end of the room, was a heavily armored Sentry Bot, aiming its weapons at them and charging closer.

“Oh, you’ve gotta be fucking--”

Danse shoved Kori out of the way of a volley of minigun bullets, and ducking behind a crate of mini nukes. Luckily, the containers that housed them all were thick lead, not made to be easily penetrable by gunfire. It also provided them with cover. Danse skidded down next to her, grunting at the sound of grating metal.

“Christ,” Kori gasped once she’d caught her breath from having it knocked out of her. “Christ, I-- I don’t know if I can take this thing on right now.”

She looked up to Danse with wide, terrified eyes, and he sighed through his nose as he took out her submachine gun from her weapon pack.

“You keep the weapons loaded,” he commanded, “and I’ll keep firing. No matter what you do, do _not_ move from this position. I’ll toss you empty weapons, you toss me loaded ones. I’ll try to eliminate its primary weapons and force the robot into its self-destruct sequence.”

The vault dweller's eyes nearly popped out of their sockets. “Are you _trying_ to make a new crater in the Glowing Sea!?” Kori shrieked, gesturing to the crates of nukes all around them.

“Just _trust_ me,” Danse begged. “Have I given you reason to doubt me before?”

He didn’t leave her with time to argue-- in the next moment, the Paladin darted out from their cover, shouting as he fired on the robot. It had come startlingly close in the time they had been formulating a plan, and Danse had to jump back to avoid being punched by the Sentry Bot. Minigun bullets chased after him as he ran past the bot and into more cover, reloading the Submachine gun with the one clip he’d brought along with him. However, he was disrupted when the Sentry Bot came barreling around the corner, punching him and sending him flying back.

“ _Engaging hostile target._ ”

Danse snarled, but ended up curling in on himself when there was an explosion behind the Sentry Bot. The war machine turned around, sensing a new primary threat, just as another grenade exploded.

“This way, fucker!”

“Damn it, Kori! Stop!” Danse shouted, jumping to his feet and shooting at the Sentry Bot again. The bot once more changed its primary target, charging after Danse as he continued to run backwards. He jumped around the next available corner just before he would have been hit again, moving back towards the center of the room. He glanced behind him and saw Kori with a shotgun, walking towards Danse.

“Knight, get _down_ ,” he commanded, but Kori just continued to march past him and waited for the Sentry Bot to round the corner.

“I’m not reloading your _damn guns_ ,” she argued, holding the shotgun close to herself. As the Sentry bot veered around the corner, sights still set on Danse, she snuck behind it and rushed around it in circles, pumping shot after shot into its back where its Fusion Cores lay.

Danse panicked, doing everything in his power not to shoot Kori as she ran around in circles. Only when she ended up tripping and the robot finally managed to set its sights on her did he attempt the insane. Kori was in no position to take further damage, and Danse was going to make certain she didn't sustain any more if it was the last thing he did. So, he snatched up a crowbar from the supply bag, and jumped onto the bot’s back.

The machine jolted, sensing the increase in weight, and its torso began to spin wildly. Danse grunted as he held on tight with one armored hand, the other taking the crowbar and trying to tear apart the machine’s head. Sheet after sheet of metal tore away, until he dug the weapon into its optics, leaving the Sentry Bot blind. Luckily, Kori was underneath the machine when it opened fire randomly, spraying a volley of minigun bullets all throughout the room. She yelped and curled in on herself, throwing her arms over her head.

“Damn it!” Danse held on tightly, but he was eventually flung off, and he curled in on himself to defend as much of himself as he could from the spraying bullets. His vision spun from the tumble, but he recovered quickly, and got to his hands and knees. “Knight! Report!”

When the barrage of bullets stopped, he glanced up, only for his eyes to widen in horror. Kori was on the Sentry Bot’s back, screaming as she tore open the back casing and stuffed a grenade in between the two Power Cores.

“No!” The Paladin screamed, attempting to get to his feet, but he was stopped when Kori was tossed off and into his arms. She looked up at him, clearly shaken, and then they remembered the grenade in between the Sentry Bot's Power Cores.

There was no time to retreat. Danse quickly flipped their positions, so that Kori was under him, before scrambling to his feet and rushing to put as much distance between the ticking time bomb and themselves as he could. When the Sentry Bot finally exploded, the blast sent him flying forwards, and he tucked in his knees, skidding along the ground while still keeping Kori under him, uncrushed by his own Power Armor and protected from the blast of the explosion. Their heads collided hard, and Danse’s vision blurred white and his ears rang.

The second explosion was unexpected. They hit heads again, and Danse knew he was shouting in agony, even if he couldn’t hear himself, but still, his hold on the vault dweller did not falter. Even as the heat from the blast became unbearable, and all Danse wanted to do was hide his face in his hands, the vulnerable woman in his arms was his first priority. Kori’s protection above all else.

When the ringing began to fade, and his vision began to return to him, Danse allowed himself a gasp of breath. Tension flooded out of him, and he shook his head to clear his sight further. He looked down at the woman in his arms, and froze.

Her eyes were closed. Her nose was bleeding. She… oh God, was she breathing? Danse held his breath, and brought her closer to listen to hers. Yes, yes, she was breathing. She was alive. Unconscious, likely from their heads smacking together, but alive. He breathed a sigh of relief, and struggled to his feet, shaky as they were.

“I got you, soldier,” he promised, holding her in one arm while he brushed away the hair off of her head with the other. “I’ve got you.”

He set down the distress pulser on a piece of pre-war moving equipment, taking a seat there and holding Kori close to himself, rocking back and forth more to soothe himself than anything else. In the silence of the bomb storage facility, left alone with his thoughts, his mind drifted back to what he had come to realize before the Sentry Bot interrupted him.

He loved her. He _loved_ her. Fuck, he loved her. That wasn’t supposed to happen. Not at any point during this. Not ever. Danse bit his lip in frustration, shaking his head and trying to think of something, _anything_ else, to no avail. Even after all their struggle and strife, even after they had treated each other so horribly because of their different views, he still remembered the times they laughed together. How they always had each other’s backs, no matter the odds, their immense faith and trust. The long nights of passion, the long days of fighting against seemingly impossible odds… no matter what, they stuck close, even through their differences.

He felt so selfish for wanting more. For wanting closer. For wanting someone who probably wouldn’t stick around long after the Institute was finally rubble.

What was he supposed to do? Danse had never really _loved_ anyone before. Maybe Cutler, but that was a _maybe_ . They’d been very close friends, but it just _wasn’t the same as this_ . And even with his inexperience, it didn’t matter. Kori probably was still wanting to keep him at arm’s distance, after the stunt he had pulled back in Sanctuary. If he was really going to get anywhere _close_ to confessing how he felt to her… he’d have to start patching things up between them.

His first chance came when her eyes fluttered open, and she stared around the room in a daze. Her gaze settled on Danse, eyes narrowed as she fought away the blur.

“Welcome back,” he said softly, offering a nervous, shaking smile.

Kori opened her mouth, and then promptly snapped it shut. “... am I dead?”

Danse snorted, helping her upright. That was typically a good sign, if Kori was joking. “Unfortunately, no. You’re still stuck in an underground bomb disposal site in heavily irradiated wasteland with a soldier of war. Sorry to disappoint.”

“Ah. Hell, I’ll live.” Kori held a hand to her throbbing head, ignoring the dried blood on her face. “I’ve been through worse situations than being blown up by a war machine. All the broken bones… you’d be shocked, really.”

“I don’t think so,” he replied, and they both laughed, but it was weak. Danse sighed, after a while. “What you did back there… that was… stupid.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“You could have died.”

“Yeah.”

“And what did we agree on back in Vault 95?”

Kori sighed, sitting on the machinery slightly turned away from Danse. “To not die for each other in battle.”

“That’s right. And yet you put yourself at risk again. Why?”

The vault dweller rubbed her arm. “Because… I just… I just wanted the damn machine to die. It didn’t have anything to do with you, I was just tired, and frustrated. And that’s dangerous. And I’m sorry.”

Danse relented, patting her shoulder. “You’re forgiven.”

They went quiet, for a moment.

“Can we… talk? Now?” His words were hesitant, stilted. "Or at least, can I explain myself?"

“Yeah.” Kori nodded, scrubbing at her lip and nose. “Yeah, while we wait for the Brotherhood to show up. I might leave beforehand. Not sure yet, but let’s talk.”

Danse nodded his gratitude. He took a split-second to think of something to say, something to mend the rift between them.

“Not long ago, I approached you, and berated you for straining our relationship. I told you I didn’t like how things were going between us, and that caused some severe turbulence in our relationship. There was a long period where, I’m ashamed to admit it, but I considered seriously requesting having you removed from my command. I was just so… _appalled_ at how quickly things fell apart between us, and I felt very hurt and betrayed. But the simple fact of the matter is, we’ve both had very different life experiences. It’s unfair of me to expect you to change so quickly. We need time to understand each other’s viewpoints completely-- one or two conversations isn’t going to change our entire outlook on life. The only way to make this friendship work, is if we stick together even through our rough patches. And the truth is… I miss you terribly. And I was hoping that we could be together again. Will you give me another chance?”

Kori blinked in surprise, having stopped scrubbing dried blood from her lips midway through Danse’s speech. She lowered her arm slowly, sniffling, before nodding. “Yeah. Yeah, you’ve got a point. We definitely need to cool off and think things through when we get into those heated discussions. I’m sure you have valid points, and I have valid points, and then we have really _stupid_ points… yeah. I want us to be together again.”

The Paladin’s heart flipped in his chest, and he beamed. “Outstanding,” he said, and her laughter sent his mood skyrocketing.

“I’ll never get tired of hearing you say that.” She slapped a hand on his Power Armored knee, before standing. “Alright then. Should we head out? Maybe the Vertibirds are already outside and we can hitch a ride back.”

“Negative,” he replied. “Now that this site’s been secured, you should return to the airport immediately. I’ll remain on watch until the Vertibirds arrive. If we want Liberty Prime to reach peak fighting efficiency, we can’t afford to lose this stockpile.”

“Alright. That makes sense.” Kori nodded, though she seemed slightly disappointed Danse wasn’t tagging along with her.

“Are you…” Danse hesitated. Something in him didn’t want to let Kori go. She was walking and talking fine, even though it was clear she was still in immense pain, but a part of him felt like, if he let her go… this would be the last he ever saw of her. “Are you… certain that you’re capable of leaving here on your own?”

“Danse,” Kori laughed, and she ruffled his hair, to his minor annoyance. “I’ll be fine. You just watch the bombs, and we’ll talk later, okay? We’re going to fuck over the Institute, hardcore. We're going to do that, and we’re going to do it together. But until then… stay safe, okay?”

The Paladin nodded, and he gave her a half-hearted salute. ‘ _Tell her how you feel, before it’s too late_.’ His mind was setting off all sorts of red flags, and screaming at him. Confess.

"Kn-Knight Farnsworth?"

The vault dweller halted in her footsteps, and glanced back towards Danse. The Paladin struggled to speak.

"I... A-Adrian."

When Kori furrowed her brow in confusion, he quickly elaborated.

"My name is Adrian Danse."

Kori nodded her head in understanding, and smiled. "Adrian Danse. It suits you."

Danse said nothing more. He watched her walk away, out of the blast doors and down the hall. He said nothing more, and immediately regretted it.

Five minutes passed. Then ten. It was about twenty minutes later, when the remainder of the Brotherhood of Steel arrived, the Scribes filing in. Haylen was at the rear, looking around wildly. When she spotted Danse, she smiled, gesturing him over. He stood, and walked towards her, but his pace slowed when she started leaving the room.

“Come on,” she said, giggling. “I want to show you something.”

With an arch of his eyebrow, and one last look around the room filled with nuclear bombs, Danse obeyed.

The two of them walked a ways through the tunnels he and Kori had traversed through beforehand, before Haylen pulled him into an isolated side room, and immediately dropped to her knees, rummaging around in her pack frantically. He cheery demeanor had completely dissolved, leaving behind only panic and fear.

“Haylen, Haylen, calm down,” Danse begged, taking a knee next to her as he watched her pull out a file. “What’s going on?”

“You need to read this,” she whispered, opening the folder and thrusting the papers into Danse’s hands. “When Knight Farnsworth went into the Institute, she was given a holotape to steal information from the Institute database for us to decode and crack. We found out a _lot_ … but when we got on the topic of escaped Synths…”

Danse arched an eyebrow, and stared down at the page Haylen had opened up to. He read through it carefully, before…

 _Oh God_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TIME. FOR. SAD. INCOMING MISSION WE ALL HATTEEEEE~
> 
> Edit: Yeah, so... work may eat up far more of my time than anticipated, and between that and incoming college projects... there may not be an upload at _all_ in the next five days. Trust me, I'm just as upset, if not more, than you are. But I swear to you, if I can, I will make it work, and I'm so sorry.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BLIND BETRAYAL BLIND BETRAYAL _**BLIND BETRAYAL**_...
> 
> _with a slight twist._

He was tired, starving, and wounded. He flinched at every errant noise, never stopping to rest for one moment. He didn’t sleep. But he was alive. His feet dragged across the ash and the dust, and he didn’t even make a sound when his foot snagged on a bush and he went tumbling down the hill in front of Listening Post Bravo.

He shouldn’t be alive. But he struggled to his feet anyways. There was no reason to, and yet he persisted. Yet he struggled. He survived.

_ God _ , he shouldn’t be alive.

‘ _ What do I do? _ ’ he’d asked Haylen, every part of him numb and shaking as she ripped the file from his hands.

‘ _ You run! _ ’ the Scribe commanded, pushing at his shoulders as he stood. ‘ _ You run, far away, and you don’t look back! To hell with the Codex, it doesn’t matter what you are! You need to live, and you need to run, and you need to keep living, so go! Before we get the order to shoot you ourselves! _ ’

He hadn’t been thinking clearly, then. His only thought had been to follow the orders given to him, and so he did. Orders were normal. Orders gave him purpose, something to do. A sense of worth, so of course he’d obeyed. Now, halfway across the Commonwealth, barely able to keep on his two feet, Danse was berating himself.  ‘ _ You should have stayed. You should have stayed, and faced your fate like a true Brotherhood soldier. After all… _ ’

He tripped into the doorway of the bunker, grunting as knees bruised and swelling were assaulted again.

‘ _... after all… Synths are the enemy of the Brotherhood… and your duty is to kill all of them.  _ **_No exceptions_ ** _. _ ’

So why, then, was he still running?

A bloodied hand pounded against the elevator button, closing the doors and sending him down, down, into the depths of the earth. Exactly where he belonged. Just… not like this. Not  _ alive _ . He leaned heavily against the wall, his vision threatening to black out on him from the lack of food and sleep. He gasped for breath, broken ribs grinding together in his chest.

Fuck, why would he need food or sleep? Synths were just machines. Abominations of nature. Surely, they didn’t feel? Was he broken? Surely, he was broken. Maybe he’d been tossed out of the Institute as a defective bot.

No. The file said  _ escaped _ . He had escaped. Fled from his purpose… What was his purpose? What had he done in there? Synths… God… Synths were made from the DNA of kidnapped humans, never to be seen again. He was a  _ clone _ . A copy of someone who had likely had a family, friends. Someone they would never see again. Fuck, had he… had he killed  _ himself? _

The doors to the elevator opened, causing Danse to jump. He growled in frustration, hating himself for having a human reaction. For still  _ acting  _ human. He growled, stumbling out and through the underground bunker.

He was a  _ Synth _ . Synths... shouldn't be able to feel anything. And yet, here he was. Scared. Confused. Betrayed.   


Alone. So very alone.

The door to the far room was collapsed, but there was a hole in the wall which he slipped through, and then, there was no place else left to go. Danse looked around, before exhaustion won out, and he decided to remain. He could hide here. Figure out what to do. Where to go. He slumped down against the wall, and finally, the pain from his nonstop travel finally hit him. Danse groaned, falling to one side, finding it difficult to breathe.

Danse’s exodus from the Glowing Sea had not been easy. He managed to keep his Power Armor all the way out, and even managed to avoid any heavy opposition from the creatures that lived there.

That was all before the Vertibird arrived.

It was short. It was brutal. They opened fire at first sight, and he ran as fast as he could to avoid it. But in the end, Danse’s Power Armor had been totally and utterly demolished by the minigun fire. He’d managed to pull himself out before the Vertibird landed and the soldiers within could finish the job, and he escaped narrowly by the skin on his nose, rushing into a nearby junkyard to hide.

Still, that didn’t stop the burn in his left shoulder blade and his right side from laser rifle rounds from stinging like hell. There was a gash in his leg, as well, from a Mirelurk attack, which ate up the last of his own laser rifle ammo. All that time, he hadn’t eaten, hadn’t slept, had no stimpacks in which to heal himself with… Danse was totally and utterly defenseless.

And he was already being hunted by the Brotherhood. That Vertibird attack was proof enough of that. Already he was their enemy, mere hours after Haylen's warning. Like a stranger to those he had trained, had fought to the death with… everything he had built his life around had caved in on him in only a split second, just because of a few words on a terminal, and he was suffocating under the debris. Everyone he had known and loved were the monsters swiping at him, ready to take a bite, like nothing he had done for them was good enough.

But Danse knew how they all felt. Shocked. Betrayed. Angry. Disgusted. He felt the same way about himself. He had  _ no  _ clue, and now that he knew…

Fuck. He should have just stayed. Accepted his fate. Let them shoot him dead. It was all he was good for at this point, was target practice. Who could get the most headshots on Paladin Danse before he was nothing more than an unrecognizable, bloodied pulp? Fifty points for a groin shot before he’s dead. Danse pounded the ground in frustration, and the slight jostle it caused to his head revealed to him that he had been crying; the ground beneath his head was damp. He hadn’t even felt the tears streaming down his face.

Rivet City, Cutler, the Capital Wasteland, his childhood… how much of it was fake? No, not Cutler. Cutler was real. He was on file. But his childhood? Synths didn’t  _ age _ .  _ Fuck _ , Cutler never knew. Cutler could have finished the job. Cutler could have shot him in the stomach with a shotgun and he would have thanked him with his dying breath.  _ Fuck _ , Cutler.

Maxson. God, Maxson. He’d pulled Danse out of the pit he was digging himself in so willingly, with only good intentions, not knowing he had saved the very thing he was trying to destroy. Fuck, no wonder the order to kill him had been issued so fast-- the Elder was  _ horrified _ . Beyond furious. Danse knew him… Danse knew Arthur….  _ Fuck _ , Arthur, too. One of his oldest friends. They had shared so much with each other, drinks, hopes for the future, battles fought side by side…

How utterly  _ abhorrent _ of Danse to have tainted everything the Brotherhood had touched. Cutler, Maxson, Quinlan, Ingram-- he’d disgraced  _ all  _ of them with his presence, with his service. The Brotherhood could never be the same again, and it was all his fault.

What if… what if he made things easier for them? What if he killed himself instead? No. No, if they found him, they would want the pleasure of doing so themselves. After he had made them doubt everything, the very structural foundations of the Brotherhood… they should get to do it, if they found him. Soldiers were probably undergoing serious inspection. Fear was likely running rampant. There had been a  _ Synth  _ among them, one of the highest ranking officers. It was such a heavy blow…

Danse sat up, slowly, head in his hands, before his vision spun, and he laid down again. It was too much, he was too weak and nauseous.

He had shattered  _ everything  _ the Brotherhood stood for. Unity. Trust. And it was all his fault.  He should have stayed. He could have apologized. Seen everyone’s faces one last time. But he couldn’t have faced them, he realized. No. He wasn’t strong enough. He had failed everyone, how could he look them in the eyes?

Danse curled in on himself, screaming brokenly in frustration at his own inability to come to a resolution on his own fate.

Who  _ was  _ he? What did he  _ want? _ To live? To die?

Should it really be up to him?

No. Of course not. He was a machine. Life as he knew it was over. Nothing mattered anymore.

 

* * *

 

He woke up with a start. Something hit him in the side, and he jolted upright, vision swimming. Danse blinked against the harsh fluorescent light of the bunker, and gazed up, slowly. At first, the person before him was a mere silhouette. But as they stepped back and away from the light, they came into focus.

Kori.

Fuck. Kori. How could he have forgotten Kori? Of  _ course  _ Maxson would send Kori. He hated her, and she and Danse were friends.  _ Close  _ friends. Of  _ course  _ Maxson would send her to do this. This was a test. If she could do this… she could stay in the Brotherhood. He still couldn’t see her expression, with the harsh light, but he could imagine that it was only disgust and betrayal, like everyone else’s.

“... I'm not surprised Maxson sent you,” he whispered, but his voice shook, unable to truly go that quiet. He averted his gaze, back propped against an old and broken console. “... He never liked to do the... dirty work... himself.” Danse blinked in confusion at his own self-revelation.  _He never liked to do the **dirty work** himself_.

The vault dweller had a shotgun slung over her shoulder, and she knelt down. Danse flinched away-- fuck, why was he so  _ scared? _ He didn’t want to die, he was afraid to die. But  _ why?  _ Kori knelt down, and her expression was very sorrowful. Very angry. “Why. Why didn’t you tell me, Danse?”

“Because I didn’t know,” he explained, chest heaving. He could barely breathe at this point, his cracked ribs too painful for him to bear. “Until Quinlan got that list decoded, I thought Synths were the enemy. I never expected to hear that  _ I  _ was one of them. If it wasn’t for Haylen, we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”

He let his head fall back, and he sucked in as much air as he could.

“So… what are your orders? Does Maxson even want me alive?”

When Kori spoke again, she sounded just as sorrowful and angry as before, but also very… afraid.

“No. But… I don’t know what to do.”

No. Danse had taught her better than that. He forced himself to look at her sternly. “Seems obvious to me.” He tried to stand up, but the ache in his body was too great-- he collapsed back down with a grunt. “Look… I’m not blind to the fact that we’re good friends, and this must be very difficult for you. I… I wish Maxson had sent someone else. But that doesn’t change a thing. I’m a Synth, which means I need to be destroyed. If you disobey your orders, you’re not only betraying Maxson, you’re betraying the Brotherhood of Steel, and  _ everything  _ it stands for.”

He stared down at his hands, eyes bleary with tears. “Synths  _ can’t  _ be trusted. Machines were never meant to make their own decisions, they need to be controlled. Technology that’s run amok is what brought the entire world to its knees, and humanity to the brink of extinction. I need to be the example… not the exception.”

“If you really feel that way,” Kori asked, voice still as soft as silk, “why did you run in the first place?”

“The moment I learned the truth,” Danse explained, still staring down at his hands, “I knew my life was in danger. I’m a soldier, so self-preservation kicked in. I needed to regroup, and assess the situation. Once I got here and I had some time to think… I realized I’d just made everything worse. I should have stayed on the Prydwen, and accepted the inevitable. Like I said… I need to be the example, not the exception.”

He stared at his hands, wondering if he stared long enough, he would be able to see seams, like clothing seams. But then, two darker hands were taking up his own, and he looked up in shock. Kori was staring at him intently.

“The empathy that you’re showing me…” she shook her head. “It’s a human emotion, Danse.”

And he remembered, all the times before, that they’d had this conversation. About the synonymity between humans and Synths. He just never expected that  _ he  _ would be the subject of these conversations. Danse shook his head.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but I’ve made my decision. I’m ready to accept the consequences of my true identity.”

“Consequence-- what consequences?”

“Maxson’s ordered you to execute me, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to stand in your way.”

“No,” she stated firmly, squeezing Danse’s hands in her own, “I won’t do it, Danse.”

“We’ve been  _ over  _ this,” he snarled weakly, pulling away. “We’re not supposed to die for each other, and you’re putting your life at risk by keeping me alive. Why do you keep  _ doing this  _ for me? Why now?”

Kori sighed, shifting to her knees instead of the balls of her feet. “Besides  _ everything  _ that you and I have talked about before, and everything that Nick has told you-- we talk a  _ lot _ about you-- this, right here, and  _ everything  _ you’ve done leading up to this point, is proof that Maxson’s  _ wrong _ . You’re a Synth, but everything you’ve done has been for the  _ good  _ of mankind.”

“Good or not, I’m still the enemy.” Danse sighed out through his nose. “I am still an example of the threat that lingers over the horizon, ready to choke out the last of humanity. I don’t wish to debate this any longer. You swore an oath to destroy the Institute, and every Synth that you find. No exceptions.”

He looked up into Kori’s eyes. Her lips were set thin, her expression stubborn.

“Consider this your greatest test, Knight,” he supplied, hoping the issuing of a challenge would push her in the right direction. “Do you have what it takes to get the job done?”

“This  _ isn’t right _ ,” she insisted.

“It doesn’t matter. Don’t let your feelings about me cloud your judgement. This decision is bigger than both of us. It’s about the future of the Brotherhood. We must stay on mission, no matter the cost.”

He reached out to take a hold of her shotgun, to help her in aiming it his way, but she pulled back. Danse couldn’t hold himself back anymore.

“What the  _ hell  _ are you waiting for!?” he cried.

“Almost a month ago,” Kori stated, voice cool and slow, “you said to me that you would trust me with your life. You said to me that you’d been ravaged by loss, but you chose to keep living so long as there were people who cared about you. And I fucking care about you, Danse. I care about what happens to you. And the world is a dark and horrible place, but I’m here now. Let me help you. Let me help you pick up the pieces.”

“There are no pieces to pick up, Kori! I’m whole! I’m  _ complete _ .” Danse dropped his head. “A complete abomination. We both know that this is the right thing to do.”

“But it’s  _ not _ .” Kori sat back with a grunt, running a hand down her face. “Danse, you  _ know  _ I don’t give a shit about what the Brotherhood thinks, and I don’t give a shit about Ghouls and Synths. Why are you pushing me to do this? To take an innocent life?”

“Because it’s what Maxson wants and it's what needs to be done. With the Brotherhood, you have a secure future. You have access to food, medicine, allies that will protect you. If you do this, you’ll prove your loyalty. You’ll never want for anything again.”

“My safety,” she seethed, “is  _ not  _ worth your life. I will  _ not  _ do it. That is the  _ end  _ of this discussion.”

They glared at each other, for a long time. Danse relented first, hiding his face in the crook of his arm.

“Then what  _ are  _ you going to do with me, then?”

“First…”

He jolted as a needle was shoved into his arm, then relief, sweet relief, flooded his veins. He glanced over wearily at a Stimpack just as she discarded of it.

“Second…”

She fumbled around in her pack, before yanking out a box and shoving it into Danse’s arms. When he looked inside, he groaned at the sight of the snack cakes.

“Kori,” he whined, but she hushed him immediately.

“Eat,” she commanded, still sitting across from him. “When you’re feeling able to walk, we’re going to Sanctuary. The Minutemen will take care of you, Cait, Curie, MacCready, Codsworth-- they’re all your allies now. We’ll explain the situation to them, and get you settled.”

“You shouldn’t be doing this.”

“I don’t care what you think right now.” Kori snatched a snack cake out of the box, and popped one in her mouth, just for show. It worked-- Danse’s stomach grumbled. “I’m doing what I  _ know  _ is right. Not what someone told me to do, what  _ I  _ know is right.”

“If you’re so adamant about me continuing to live,” Danse said, turning away, “then I should just leave the Commonwealth. The sooner I make for the border, the sooner I put this behind me.”

Kori opened her mouth to speak, but it took her a moment to truly find her words.

“... Come with me to Sanctuary for a week. One week. If by the end of that time you still want to leave… I won’t stop you.”

Finally, the new ex-Paladin sighed, picking up one snack cake, and eating it forlornly.

“One week,” he acceded. Then he fell into silence, starvation taking hold as he wolfed down all of the food Kori provided to him.

Looking back on it, in the future, Danse would come to realize that it had been the most determined he had ever seen Kori in his life. She had only given that sort of expression when facing Elder Maxson, and even then, it had never been as intense as it was in this moment. No matter what he would have said or done, she would not have let it go. She would not have let  _ him _ go. It should have been a sign, really, but in his despair, he had completely missed it.

When Danse was sufficiently restored, Kori helped him to his feet, his arm around her shoulders. “Come on,” she grunted, and it had been so long since they had shared this sort of closeness, that Danse nearly wept at the physical contact. “Come on, we’re getting you out of here.”

The two of them made their way out of the room, towards the elevator. She stumbled when something was shoved into her free hand, and she looked down to see Danse’s holotags.

“Give those to Maxson when you see him, next,” Danse instructed her. “Tell him you did the job, and incinerated the body. It should be enough to convince him.”

The vault dweller nodded, shoving the necklace and the tags into her pocket. Then, Kori stopped short when the elevator dinged, and the doors opened.

Out stepped Elder Maxson. Startled, Kori took a step back. Danse nearly fell, but she held him fast, glaring at the leader of the Brotherhood of Steel.

“How  _ dare  _ you betray the Brotherhood,” he seethed, spittle flying from his mouth as he pointed a pistol at the both of them.

Danse separated himself from Kori, forcing himself to stay upright. “It’s not her fault,” he insisted, in an attempt to protect the woman. “It’s mine”

Maxson didn’t redirect his weapon from Kori. “I’ll deal with  _ you _ in a moment,” he snarled to Danse. “Knight! Why has this… this  _ thing  _ not been destroyed?!”

Danse cringed, but Kori only stepped boldly forwards. “I refused,” she informed him, “because your orders are ridiculous.”

“How  _ dare  _ you.” The Elder stepped closer to her as well. “'Danse' isn't a man. It's a machine. An automaton created by the Institute! It wasn't born from the loving womb of a mother, it was grown within the cold confines of a laboratory! Flesh is flesh. Machine is machine. The two were never meant to intertwine! By attempting to play God, the Institute has taken the sanctity of human life and corrupted it beyond all measure!"

Danse remained quiet through Maxson's rant, looking gradually more and more dejected, before barking out, "After all I've done for the Brotherhood, all the blood I've spilled in our name, how can you say that about me!?"

"You're the physical embodiment of what we hate most," Maxson growled, but even still, he didn’t break eye contact with Kori. "Technology that's gone too far. Look around you, Danse. You too, Knight Farnsworth. Look at the scorched earth and bones that litter the wasteland. Millions... perhaps even  _ billions _ died because science outpaced man's restraint! You're a single bomb in an arsenal of thousands preparing to lay waste to what's left of mankind!"

Kori sounded incredulous. “You’re comparing  _ Danse  _ to a nuclear bomb?”

The Elder nodded emphatically. “This machine might not be a bomb, but its goal is exactly the same. Place it where you want the damage done, and when you least expect it, it delivers a lethal blow without warning and without mercy. A precision strike delivered right at the heart of the enemy! How can you trust the word of a machine that  _ thinks  _ it’s alive?! A machine that's had its mind erased, its thoughts programmed, its very soul manufactured... Those ethics that it's striving to champion aren't even its own. They were artificially inserted in an attempt to have it blend into society."

Danse sighed, before either Kori or Maxson could speak again. His head was bowed in grief, eyes closed, but that didn't stop the tears that they could see. He steeled his nerves, and began to speak his mind.

"... it's true. I was built within the confines of a laboratory, and some of my memories aren't my own. But when I saw my brothers dying at my feet, I felt sorrow. When I defeated an enemy of the Brotherhood, I felt pride. And when I heard your speech about saving the Commonwealth... I felt hope."

Danse grew more confident and self-assured the more he spoke, but it seemed fragile. Still, he pressed on, coming to stand next to Kori rather than behind her. "Don't you understand, Arthur? I thought I was human. From the moment I was taken in by the Brotherhood, I've done absolutely nothing to betray your trust, and I never will."

Arthur merely narrowed his eyes, expression cold and heartless. "It's too late for that now. The Institute has foolishly chosen to grant you life. You simply should not exist. I don't intend to debate this any longer.  _ My order stands _ ."

Danse's shoulders dropped in a second, all of his confidence shattered in an instant. He bit his lip, and looked down at his feet. No tears. No tears. Don’t let them fall. "It's... alright," he whispered to Kori. "We did our best. But we both know that this is how it should have been in the first place. There’s no point in fighting this. But I’ll remember the mercy and the compassion you showed me in my final hour."

"Touching," Arthur sneered, and he moved to point the weapon at Danse’s head instead. Danse kicked himself mentally, silencing his fight or flight response. "Either you execute Danse, or I will, Knight. The choice is yours."

Kori shook her head, and darted in front of Danse, arms outstretched and barking right in Maxson’s face. “After  _ all  _ of the sacrifices I’ve made and all the battles I’ve fought for the Brotherhood, you need to listen to me. You owe me  _ that  _ much.”

They stared each other down, snarls and glares, before the Elder backed away. “Very well. I’m listening.”

The vault dweller relaxed, but only negligibly. “Danse joined the Brotherhood with one singular goal in mind, and that was to make a difference in the world. His intentions have  _ never  _ been malicious, and he had  _ never  _ intended to bring harm to another innocent human being. You  _ know  _ for a fact that all Danse has ever done with his time in the Brotherhood was to  _ help  _ people, and to follow the Codex down to the letter. He always put the lives of soldiers under his command above his own, including mine. Whether he’s human or not, Danse saved the lives of  _ countless  _ Brotherhood soldiers. After everything he’s done for you… Now it’s time you saved his.”

Silence flooded the room. Kori held her ground, shielding Danse from Maxson’s gun, and the Elder continued to point it at her anyways. Danse was almost ready to push Kori aside and  _ beg  _ for Maxson to shoot him, before…

“You’re a stubborn woman.”

Kori did not reply. Maxson continued.

“So. It appears we’ve arrived at an impasse. Allowing Danse to live undermines everything the Brotherhood stands for, yet you insist that he remains alive. Which leaves me with only a single alternative."

Danse and Kori simultaneously tensed, holding their breaths. Alternative?

"Danse... as far as I'm concerned, you're dead. You were pursued and slain by this Brotherhood Knight, and your remains were incinerated. From this day forward, you are forbidden to set foot on the Prydwen, or speak to anyone from the Brotherhood of Steel. Should you choose to ignore me, know that you'll be fired upon immediately. Do we understand each other?"

Danse's expression fell yet again. He furrowed his brow, and closed his eyes, head bowed low. "I do. Thank you for believing in me, Arthur."

The Elder snarled at the Synth’s kind words. "Don't mistake my mercy for acceptance. The only reason you're still alive..." He pointed at Kori, "is because of her. I'm returning to the Prydwyn, Knight. Take some time, say your goodbyes, and then I expect to see you there. We still have the Institute to deal with."

With that, the Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel took his leave, turning around and entering the elevator. His expression was nothing but disgust and anger, all directed at Danse, as the doors slowly closed. Only when they heard the elevator going up did Kori release the breath she had been holding, stumbling backwards. Danse caught her, but only just barely without falling over himself. He carefully lowered the both of them to the ground.

“God,” the vault dweller shuddered, “what an asshole.”

They sat in silence, but only for a few seconds. Silence was starting to disturb Danse. He couldn't let it settle.

“It took a hell of a lot of guts to stand up to Maxson like that,” he whispered, playing with Kori’s hair mindlessly as she rested against his chest.

She only hummed in response, for a moment. “Hey. Friends take care of each other. No matter what.”

Friends. Yeah. Danse sighed through his nose.

They rested for a few minutes longer. “We shouldn’t stay here,” Kori said, pulling herself away from Danse and standing back up. “We’ll get you to Sanctuary, avoiding the Brotherhood's regular Vertibird routes, and then I’ll go talk to Maxson once you’re settled.”

The ex-Paladin nodded, allowing Kori to take his hand and pull him up. He nearly whimpered when she pulled her hand away, before he looked away, disgusted with himself.  He was a Synth. Any romantic feelings he may have harbored for Kori before… meant nothing now. He was a machine. She was human. And Maxson was right about one thing…

The two should never intertwine.

 

* * *

 

Codsworth was the first to greet them upon their re-arrival into Sanctuary. He rushed up quickly, excitedly, before seeing that Danse was with her, and approached a little more cautiously, but no less enthusiastically. The Sentry Bot approached menacingly, but backed down upon realizing that these newcomers were not threats.

“Mum!” he exclaimed, “are you alright? And Danse, sir, it is… good to see you again.”

“Hey, Codsy.” Kori sighed when Danse remained silent, refused to make eye contact. “Listen, I… get everyone together at the pavilion. There’s something we need to discuss.”

“At once, mum!” The bot saluted her, before rushing off to gather the residents of the neighborhood. Dogmeat ran up to them once Codsworth had parted, yipping in excitement and begging Danse to be petted. The Synth only offered a half-hearted pat to the head, before continuing onwards.

Most everyone had already gathered by the time Danse and Kori came into view: Cait, MacCready, Sturges, Preston were all seated, while the rest of the Minutemen and Curie were still making their way there. Once everyone was seated, Kori turned to Danse, whispering.

“Can I tell them, or should I make something up?”

Danse was staring at his hands again. “Just tell them,” he said. “We’re not hiding this from  _ anyone _ . They can decide what to do with me.”

Kori nodded, and took a deep breath.

“What I’m about to tell you all is going to come as a shock,” she began, “so… brace yourselves for the worst.”

Curie whispered something about a vault being wiped out by sickness, before nodding to herself. MacCready pulled out a photograph from his coat pocket, before quickly shoving it back inside. The rest of the residents only shifted uneasily.

“Due to information I acquired from the Institute,” Kori said, loud enough so that everyone present could not possibly miss her words, “the Brotherhood decoded a list of missing or escaped Synths. They inspected it very thoroughly, and discovered… they discovered that Paladin Danse, one of their highest ranking and most respected… was a Synth.”

There was a collection of gasps and murmurs of shock and surprise. Cait surged forwards.

“Y-you dirty son of a bitch!” she hollered, throwing an empty can at him. Preston pulled her back. “You’ve been lying to us!? You’ve been treatin’ Nick and Hancock like garbage even though you’re one of ‘em?”

“I didn’t know,” Danse murmured, just barely loud enough to be heard.

“I mean, it makes sense,” MacCready said, leaning back in his seat. “I mean, does the guy even feel anything? He’s a walking thesaurus, he walks the walk but he doesn’t talk the--”

Sturges slapped a hand over the younger man’s mouth, and Mac tossed his arm off angrily. Danse was clenching his fists.

“The Brotherhood knows,” Kori continued. “I had to save him from being executed from Elder Maxson myself. Regardless of Danse’s identity, he is still my friend. He is still  _ our  _ friend. And he needs our help now, like you all helped me before.”

“Oh, but of course!” Curie explained, rushing towards Danse, but stopping herself short from mothering him. “We would be more than happy to supply you with any emotional comfort you need! This revelation must be  _ so  _ difficult for you.”

“Yeah, we’ve got your back,” Preston replied, even while Cait and MaCready continued to brood. The Minuteman leader stood up, snagging a beer from a cooler, and setting it on the table next to Danse, not forcing it into his hand or waiting for him to take it. “Whatever you need, we’ll help out.”

“As… much as I appreciate all of your kindness,” Danse said, standing up slowly, “I just want to rest. Maybe if I sleep long enough, I’ll finally realize this is all a nightmare-- a very long nightmare-- and I’ll wake back up on the Prydwen.”

“Oh, sir,” Codsworth said as Danse began to walk away, “please, don’t think that way… you’re going to be alright. I-- I swear it!”

Kori hissed at MacCready and Cait to be good to him, before she rushed to catch up with him. She grabbed onto his shoulder, but Danse jolted away from her, eyes wide and lips sealed tightly shut. He shook his head, closing his eyes to keep from letting tears spill over.

“Danse, come here,” Kori begged. She held her arms open for him to walk into, but Danse only backed away further.

“Don’t,” he commanded, voice something almost feral-sounding. “Don’t touch me. Not me. You don’t deserve--”

And then he had to cut himself off, voice cracking and threatening to push him over the edge.

“I’ve spent my entire life… or, at least what I perceive as my life… following a plan to shape my own future. But since my banishment, I feel lost… almost like I exist without purpose. For the first time since that moment I signed up with the Brotherhood, I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have a plan. And it scares the hell out of me.”

Kori again attempted to approach him. He took another step back. “What you’ve gone through would throw anyone for a loop. You’re just confused.”

“You’re damn right I’m confused,” he snapped. “I’m a machine that thinks like a human who was trained to hunt the very thing I’ve always been. Don’t you understand? Everything I had, everything I knew is gone. In the span of a few hours, my identity was ripped from me and my world turned upside down. At least what  _ you  _ had was something tangible… something real. Your husband, your son… they were living, breathing humans who loved you and cared for you. I don’t even know how much of my own past is artificial and how much is real. Can you even imagine that? I started out as nothing, and I’ve ended up as nothing… and I don’t know what the hell to do about it!”

Kori’s mouth flapped uselessly, for a moment, before she settled on, “I’m truly sorry, Danse. I guess I never realized how deeply this affected you.”

He closed his eyes again, and shook his head.

“But I don’t care what you are,” Kori reminded him, gently. “Please… please let me help you.”

“Don’t you have anything  _ better  _ to do than hover over me?” the ex-Paladin snapped, and the vault dweller recoiled in surprise, but only for a moment, before she shook her head.

“Honestly? No. Are people depending on me? Fuck, when are they not? But right now, you’re my priority. If you  _ really  _ want me to leave you alone, I will, but I want to be here for you.”

“You don’t have to waste your time on me,” Danse insisted. “I’m just a machine. Besides, I’ll be gone in a week, anyways.”

Kori stared pathetically at Danse for a long time, before taking a step back from him.

“Please stay here,” she begged. “If you really don’t want me around, then there’s someone I’m going to go talk to. Someone else who I think can help you. I have to talk to Maxson, anyways, but after that, I--”

“Do whatever you want. I’m going to bed.”

And so, the ex-Paladin brushed past Kori, towards the house he’d called his own the last time he was here, and he hoped that maybe, he’d been cruel enough that she would realize that he wasn’t worth her time.


	19. Chapter 19

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which danse begins to learn how to bond with people (except for with the one person he really should be trying to bond with), Kori finally finds what she wants for herself, and Nick starts **makin' moves on the boy**.
> 
> Also, so sorry for the late upload! Work was soo long DX and I will for certain be unable to update tomorrow, but we'll try for Tuesday!

Danse found himself enveloped by darkness. He opened his eyes, but it was as if nothing had happened at all. Startled, he sprang to his feet, staring all around him. He wasn’t blind-- he held his hands to his face, and he could see them, but the world around him was nothing but a black void. But where such a void would surely ensure silence, there was a distant, faint rumbling, steadily growing in volume. Cautiously, he stumbled forwards, holding out his arms to brace himself for anything.

“Hello?” he called.

“Boo.”

He whirled around, sharply, only to be faced with… himself. Only… was it really himself? Those eyes weren’t his-- they were that of earlier generation Synths, golden and glowing, what was supposed to be white instead an inky black. Danse shook his head, blinking rapidly.

“No. Don’t bother. I’m  _ very  _ real.” The alternate version of himself grinned unrealistically wide. “But are you?”

“You’re  _ not  _ real,” Danse insisted, backing away slowly. “There’s only one of me.”

“But are you sure of that?” The other Danse followed. “Are you absolutely  _ positive  _ you’re the only you? You are a Synth, after all. A freak of nature, a mistake. They could make a thousand of you and no one would know who was the Brotherhood Danse and who was a fraud.”

Suddenly, Danse found himself unable to move. The mirror image of himself stopped short, a crooked smirk on his features.

“Oh. But wait. You’re a fraud, too." He chuckled, and let his hands rest behind his back. "You're a set of pre-programed emotions and personalities predetermined by the Institute. And, someday, you're going to get someone killed because of it. You’re a fraud with a dead man’s body and falsely implanted memories. How sad. You’re just as fake as the rest of the Synths, but me… I’m a real nightmare.”

The other Danse surged forwards-- he had a knife in his hand-- and he plunged the weapon into Danse’s gut.

The ex-Paladin shot up with a gasp, clutching his stomach and scrambling to get out of bed, only to fall to the floor in a heap. The covers tangled around his legs, and at first only escalated his panic, before he closed his eyes and forced his breath to steady. There, he finally realized it had only been a nightmare, and he groaned upon realizing that he was so stiff he could barely move at all. He would have remained there to recover for longer, but curiosity yanked him from his sheets. There were far too many voices outside from what he had seen of who remained in Sanctuary last night.  Blearily, he stumbled from the house, towards the pavilion, only to find that all of the other companions had arrived. Nick, Hancock, Deacon… they were all here now, and gathered around who Danse could only assume to be Kori. Figuring that he should probably go over and investigate what was going on, he went back inside to put on a shirt, before heading back out.

“... good thing you queued us in on this,” Deacon was saying, shoulders hunched as he stared over something on the center table. “We’ve already got guys assembled there in case of  _ any  _ Institute activity, but I’ll pass word along to Des to up security.”

“Have you told the Brotherhood?” Nick asked.

“No,” Kori replied, shaking her head. “I’m no longer working with the Brotherhood. Doesn’t matter what rank Maxson wants to throw at me, I will  _ not  _ be a Paladin for him now, or ever. Hopefully he’ll just mark me as MIA instead of hunting the Commonwealth for me. It’s a 50/50 given how much he hates me.”

Danse’s blood ran cold in his veins. Kori left the Brotherhood? Her future-- her victory against the Institute-- it was all practically guaranteed there! And she had just thrown it all away? He could scarcely believe that she could be so stupid, and yet here she was, saying it even though she didn’t know he was here, listening. It had to be true. Liberty Prime would remain unfinished, and that would be it. That was the end of the Brotherhood’s fight against the Institute here. Unless Maxson came to hunt for her, the Brotherhood held no more power.

There was no use bringing it up, now. What was done was done.

“You…  _ are  _ going to be helping out those Synths, right, Whisper?” Deacon’s voice was accusatory. Kori cringed, and bit her lip. Deacon shook his head and tsked. “Not good,” he replied to her reaction. “I know you  _ say  _ you want to destroy the Institute, but current action indicates hesitation. Not good.”

“Hey, she’s got a lot to process,” Piper snapped. “Her husband’s dead, her son is enemy number one to the commonwealth, and now she’s got Danse to deal with.”

“I’m not  _ dealing  _ with him,” the vault dweller snarled, “I’m  _ helping  _ him. Or, so the plan was, until this came up last night. If I’d just… stayed away from the Institute, I wouldn't have this on my plate, too.”

Piper placed a hand on Kori’s shoulder. “Hey, don't sweat it, Blue. You’re figuring stuff out. That takes time. I mean, I’m definitely not saying the Institute is something you should side with, by any means, but I get why you’re so torn up about this. Family is family.”

“I’m more caught up on the morals of it rather than any actual emotion,” Kori admitted. She dropped her head with a sigh. “I know Shaun doesn’t love me. It was apparent the moment he met me. But that motherly instinct, that part of me that knows he’s my baby… I would be sick with myself if I killed him.”

“Then you don’t have to,” Deacon said again sternly, “but the Institute has to go. Shaun probably has to go with it, but you don’t have to put a gun to his head, Whisper. Think of  _ everything  _ they’ve done, both to you  _ and  _ to the Commonwealth. Think about Danse.”

“Stop bringing Danse into this!” Kori shouted suddenly, pounding her fist on the table. Everyone jumped, startled, and Deacon even stumbled backwards. “Danse is  _ not  _ related to the Institute, he is not related to my burdens or my worries, Danse is just  _ Danse _ . Ignore his race and ignore his past, and just focus on including him in our group as he  _ is _ , not for what he  _ was _ .”

Danse finally spoke up, folding his arms. “You mean as a Synth,” 

Everyone’s eyes turned to him, and there was silence. Deacon looked at Danse for only a second, before glancing away, back down at the map. Then, there was Hancock, growling. “Welcome home,  _ buddy _ ,” he spat, eyes narrowed. Nick elbowed him.

“Hancock.” Danse nodded his head towards the Ghoul, too empty to feel any disgust or hatred. He turned back to the rest of the group. “What’s going on?”

Curie informed Danse of the situation. “Kori has gathered us all to inform us that the Institute is planning a massive attack at Bunker Hill! She’s gathered us to help her come up with a strategy, and to take some companions with her to the fight as well. I am remaining here, though.” Her last statement sounded disappointed.

“Sure,” Danse replied. “Just give me a weapon, and I’ll be sure to take out anything as necessary.”

“I haven’t decided on a course of action yet,” Kori said, “but I already know for a  _ fact  _ that you can’t come, Danse. The Brotherhood’s been patrolling that area for weeks now, and I can’t take that risk of losing you.”

At that, Danse grew angry. He jammed a finger into his own chest. “I’m supposed to be dead anyways!” he shouted in frustration, before quieting himself in embarrassment at the outburst. He shook his head and bit his lip. "What does it matter if they gun me down out there in comparison to anywhere else in the Commonwealth? If I'm going to die, it may as well be protecting the people I care about than just sitting around  _waiting for it_."

Kori stood up straighter, and stormy winds rolled through her eyes. “Your identity does not determine the value of your life. Not to me, and not to anyone else here. You are  _ worth  _ saving.”

Most everyone nodded in agreement, before Kori turned back to the task at hand.

“This is all so fucked,” Kori murmured, shaking her head. “Okay. So we run in, we get to the Synths, and then…”

“And then I guess we find out who you really are,” Preston said, leaning against a pillar with his hat tilted down.

“And then I guess,” Kori echoed. “As for my team, I’m calling in Hancock, Deacon, Cait, and Preston. Sorry, Mac; I know you wanted to come, but this mission isn’t really sniper friendly.”

“Eh, no worries,” he shrugged. “I’ll just play cards with Tin Can Man. You ever played cards, Danse?”

Danse ignored MacCready, electing to stand at the other side of the table opposite of Kori. “Kori, I  _ insist  _ upon accompanying you on this mission. From the sounds of it, you’re heading into a full blown  _ battlefield _ . You’ll need a soldier’s expertise, regardless of the risks!”

"Bringing you with puts anyone else in my group at risk!" She hissed, and gestured around to everyone seated at the table. "If the Brotherhood is shooting at you, then they're shooting at _us_. As much as I want you with me, I  _can't_ threaten everyone else's lives like that." The vault dweller glowered, but only for a moment as she pondered. “If you want to help,” Kori said at last, pointing down at the map on the table, “then  _ you  _ take a look at this, and tell me what  _ you  _ think the smartest course of action is. I want in and out, fast, I want to face as little opposition as possible, and I want to keep the people I  _ am  _ taking with me safe.”

With a furrowed brow, Danse wedged himself between MacCready and Deacon, staring down at the plans provided to him. Deacon stood up hastily, giving Danse room, and moving to the outside of the group with a sigh and a folding of his arms. This was child’s play; he took a red marker, circling Kori’s starting point, and dragging a line from there to the right.

“Chances are, the main doors will be closed and locked, but I’ve been to Bunker Hill, and this side door, if locked, is easy to break down or lockpick. Once inside, you’ll want to head straight for the center, where you’ve marked your destination.”

Everyone at the table nodded, before Kori ripped that away and supplied Danse with another map, this one being schematics for an underground complex. Again, he dictated the best course of action, to which everyone agreed.

“But,” he stated once he’d finished helping Kori out, “I think the most important tactic you have at your disposal here is going to be patience. The Railroad and the Institute will keep each other engaged, so you shouldn’t be facing too much heavy fire. So long as you move slow, and keep your head low, no one in your group should be seriously injured.”

When he looked up, Kori was no longer across from him. She had moved to his side, and before he could blink or think, there was a light kiss to his cheek. She patted his face.

“You’re a darling,” she praised him, gathering up all of the maps in her arms. Danse remained frozen still, equal parts confused and flustered, as Kori gathered her companions and instructed them to gather ammunition and weapons as they needed. A few people shot Danse snickers as they walked away, until all that was left was Danse and Nick.

“Yeah, I’ve decided you never get used to it,” the old Synth grumbled, shaking his head and tapping ash from his cigarette. “Still catches me off guard too.”

Danse shook himself out of his stupor as Nick's words failed to process, and rushed after Kori, who he saw heading towards her house. He squeezed in through the door before it closed behind her, and she glanced back briefly at him before continuing through the small hallway.

“How can you stand to do that?” he asked, following her into the right bedroom. There were only a few crates in what was once Shaun’s bedroom, and she rummaged through them for ammunition.

“Your skin is real, and I thought it would be a nice way to say thank you,” she shrugged, snatching up some .45 bullets. “Danse, you’re overthinking this whole situation.”

“I’m not overthinking anything,” he countered. “I’m a Synth and I shouldn’t exist. End of story.”

“That’s not what I meant,” Kori sighed. “Yes, you are a Synth, but you’re overthinking what  _ that  _ means, both for yourself and for what others think of you. Just take a moment to breathe.”

Breathe. Breathing. Danse hadn’t even thought of that as something he was still doing, his brain so intent on the idea that he was metal and wires rather than bone and flesh. He was doing it, yes, but his brain panicked-- he  _ shouldn’t  _ be breathing. True machines didn’t need to breathe.

Kori sensed this immediately, and she sighed as she stood, coming to stand in front of Danse. He took a frightened step back, and Kori’s expression shifted into deep sadness.

“... I hate seeing you like this,” she whispered, brushing hair off of her forehead. “Danse… I’m not disgusted with you. This doesn’t change how I see you, as my friend and my companion.”

But the ex-Paladin just shook his head in disbelief. “That’s impossible,” he snapped. “You’re lying. Everything I told you about myself… how much of those aren’t my memories? Doesn’t that bother you? To know that I’ve lied to you?”

“It’s not lying if you don’t _know_ you’re lying,” she countered, and she tried to approach him again, and he took another step back. He was backed against a wall now, shaking his head.

“I don’t need your sympathy. You don’t have to be nice to me anymore.”

“Danse,  _ please _ ,” Kori begged. “You have to understand, what you are doesn’t matter to me. I mean it. I still--” Her breath caught on itself. “I-- you’re still my friend. I still want to help you. I’m not repulsed by you just because you were made in a lab. You’re human to me.”

“Kori,  _ please stop _ ,” he shouted, but the vault dweller didn’t even flinch. She only stepped closer, and slowly raised her hand. The Synth flinched, but didn’t close his eyes. Didn’t run away.

“Give me your hand,” she said.

“What for.”

She didn’t elaborate. She only waited expectantly. Hesitantly, Danse lifted his hand, but he didn’t make skin contact with the woman. Kori moved slowly, so that he could pull away if he wanted, when she took a hold of his hand in her own. Her gentle fingertips met his, and she pushed their palms flat together.

“Barring skin color,” she whispered, “look at our hands. Pay attention to the way my skin feels against yours.”

Danse frowned, and looked away. “That’s… programmed,” he excused it. “A predetermined reaction to certain stimulus. I doubt that I’m actually feeling this. It’s a trick.”

“No. You have nerves. You have nerves that feel, that  _ hurt _ . This is real, Danse. You are real. From mother or laboratory, you’re still human. Synth is just a label that explains how you were made, but you’re human.”

“There’s  _ nothing  _ human about being mass-produced,” Danse barked, pulling his hand away and stepping to the side away from Kori. “I know you’re trying to help me, but the reality of the situation is I am a threat to humanity. That means I’m a threat to  _ you _ . I won't leave, but I want you to know that I can't stay in good conscience in the Commonwealth knowing what I really am.”

Kori blinked rapidly. “Danse--”

“I’m sorry. I-- I can’t. I just _can't_ _._ ”

He turned away from her and left without another word.

 

* * *

 

Danse watched sullenly from the side of Nick’s house as Kori and the other companions headed out of Sanctuary, on their way to Bunker Hill. He leaned against the side of the wall, arms folded, and he looked away when Kori glanced back at him, huffing out through his nose.

She deserved better than him. Someone she could grow old with, start a new family with. He was a machine that hated his own kind, who was incapable of aging or having children. On top of that, it was likely that she didn’t hold the same romantic feelings for him that he did for her. Her kindness was out of friendship and her desire to help everyone she came across. But she didn’t have to force herself to be kind to Danse. He knew he was a mistake. He only wished that he could get her to see that.

He was disrupted from watching the group walk away by a familiar timid voice. “M… Monsieur Danse? Are you… hungry at all? Have you eaten today?”

“No.”

"... um... no you are not hungry?"

"No, I haven't eaten."

“Oh. Well... would you like me to bring you something? I know just the thing that always lifts my spirits when I am feeling blue.”

Damn it. Damn Curie. So small. So gentle. He couldn't tell her no. “I’ll come with you,” Danse replied, hoisting himself off of the wall and following Curie to the community kitchen. She kept her pace slow, expecting Danse to walk by her side, but he never did.  Upon arrival to the kitchen, Curie rummaged through the cupboards, before finding what she was searching for, and she put it on a plate, before placing it in front of Danse.

“We do not get many of these,” she explained, “as they are a pre-war food, but it is called a Sweet Roll! It’s just as the name implies, and if you are anything like me, I’m sure you’ll find it quite tasty.”

She sat across from him at the counter, all bright eyes and smiles just like the first night they had spoken. Danse couldn’t stop himself from returning a small smile of his own, and he sighed as he picked up the sickly sweet dessert and ate mostly for her sake… but also because, yes, it was delicious, and he hadn’t realized just how hungry he’d been.

As he was eating, MacCready hurried into the room, taking a seat next to Curie and slapping down a stack of cards, some created by hand, some pre-war. “Okay,” the sniper said, rubbing his hands together, “do you know how to play any card games or is that not really an activity you had time for?”

Danse finished chewing his current bite, before wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “There was gambling on the Prydwen,” he said, “but I never partook in it. It was generally frowned upon, as it was a catalyst towards further bad habits, such as drinking or using chems.”

MacCready was quiet for a moment at Danse's lengthy explanation, before speaking up again. “Okay so _anyways_ , we’re gonna start out easy since you’ve never played before, and I’ll teach you how to play war. Each of us gets half of the deck-- hold on, lemme take out the Jokers… you never play with Jokers, you see.”

As MacCready searched the deck for those two cards, Nick entered the kitchen as well, and took the seat next to Danse. 

“Sweet Roll, huh? One of the few things I can actually almost taste. What are we doing here?”

“I’m gonna teach Danse to play war,” MacCready explained, still digging through the deck.

“Deal me in too,” Nick said, and Danse noted that he had a toothpick between his teeth instead of a cigarette for once. “It’s been a while since I’ve had a good card game.”

“I would like to play as well!” Curie piped in, bouncing excitedly.

“Geeze, geeze, okay,” the sniper grumbled, finally plucking out the last Joker and setting on dealing the cards. “Okay, so listen up Danse, you  _ don’t  _ get to look at your cards in this game. It’s all about chance. You’ll draw first, and you put your card face-up. Then I’ll put my card in, then Curie, then Nick. Whoever deals out the highest ranking card gets all four cards in the pile. If two people or more draw the same number of card, like someone puts in a three and someone else puts in a three, they go to war. That’s when you put down three cards, face down, then a fourth. If the fourth card you draw is higher ranking than your opponent, then you get all  _ twelve _ cards, or more, depending on how many players are participating in the war. Whoever has the most cards by the end of the game wins.”

“Sounds lengthy,” Danse commented.

“Oh absolutely it is. Don’t worry, we usually quit before everyone runs out of cards anyways. Oh, and no under the table shuffling. Hands are  _ always  _ in eye sight.”

The four of them played for several hours. Funnily enough, Mac ran out of cards first, and then Curie, who seemed upset, but brushed it off as best as she could. They left Nick and Danse after some time, sensing that the game wasn’t going to end any time soon now that they had all of the cards. The old Synth moved to the other side of the table the other two had vacated, to give Danse some space.

They played quietly for some time. Neither of them spoke to each other, a combination of investment in their game, and of the awkwardness of the whole situation.

“So,” Nick said at one point, breaking the silence at last, “you wanna… I don’t know, is there anything you want to get off your chest? Things can’t be easy for you right now.”

“It’s not important. I’ll be gone from the Commonwealth in a week regardless.”

Nick frowned at that. “I don’t think that’s a good idea, personally.”

“I have little reason left to stay.”

“Kori will be really upset.”

Danse froze up. “That’s… she doesn’t deserve a liar and a fraud as a friend.”

“Now see,  _ Deacon’s  _ a liar and a fraud. You were just caught up in unfortunate circumstance. You haven’t done anything wrong.”

“I shouldn’t exist.”

Nick snorted. “Yeah. And neither should I, but here we both are. Oughta make the most of being mistakes by helping other people fix theirs.”

That caused Danse to furrow his brow, and he glanced up at Nick as the old robot swiped up two cards off of the table for his own quickly growing pile. The old robot wasn’t looking at him, instead down at his deck of cards. His golden eyes blinked as he pursed his cracked, fake lips. 

“The best mistake we could fix is our existence.”

“I wouldn’t bother.” Nick shrugged. “Time and Lady Luck and Fate will have that handled for us eventually, anyways. Regardless of our inability to age, I’m worn down and old and my parts fall out of place constantly. And you may be a younger Synth, but eventually, you’ll catch some sort of sick you won’t recover from, or you’ll go down on the field. Why bother with finishing the job ourselves if life is out to get us anyways? Instead of off-ing ourselves, we can be using our long, lengthy lives to do good. Like I’ve done.”

Danse sighed through his nose-- Nick did have a point. The old Synth was beaten and falling apart, but he was still trudging along, offering a helping hand where he could. He’d used his life to do good, instead of bemoaning it.  But the situation was different for Danse, or so he insisted to himself. Nick knew his past belonged to someone else all along. Danse… Danse had lived a lie, a comfortable lie, only to have it ripped from him without warning, without mercy. He had no plan. He didn’t know how to cope, how to recover, and why would he?

“You’re as easy to read as a kindergarten book,” Nick commented, and when Danse looked back up, Nick’s golden eyes were boring into him.

“Am I?” Danse swallowed, and stared down at his cards.

“You still think your life is worth less because of the way you were made.”

“The mass-production of Synths strips away the sanctity of life!” Danse argued, but Nick didn't even flinch at the sudden rise in Danse's tone. “The way I was created, how I will never grow old, how I can never have children… there’s something  _ monstrous _ about being a copy of someone who  _ could  _ do all of those things and then trying to live like their equal, because we are  _ not  _ equal.”

He expected Nick to argue right back, and he expected them to jump back into their debates, like old times. But instead, Nick took the toothpick from his mouth, and pulled out a light instead. Only after he lit it did he say:

“Yeah. That’s true. About not being equal to humans, at least. Not in function. You’re right.”

Danse looked up to Nick with wide eyes. The old bot just arched an eyebrow.

“What? You think I’m going to argue with you about everything? I only argue with you when you’re saying something stupid. That wasn’t stupid, that was insightful. Synths can’t have kids. Synths can’t grow old with their friends. Synths don’t get to experience being a child, or a teenager, they don’t get to have a life in the same way humans do. So yeah. We’re not equal there. I don’t think it’s monstrous, though. Unfortunate? Yeah. But not monstrous.”

“It’s  _ wrong _ .”

“It  _ is  _ wrong. It’s unfair that that was stripped from us without us ever having it to begin with. But save the  _ monstrous  _ comparisons for mass murderers and Deathclaws, yeah?” Nick puffed on his cigarette, and he and Danse threw down two kings at the same time. They picked through their three cards, and upon laying down the fourth… two more kings.

Danse blinked, and looked up at Nick, who looked ecstatic. “Double war!” he exclaimed, and started laying down more cards on top of his other three. Danse did the same, and then they both placed down twos. Nick cackled, tossing his head back and clapping his hands together.

Danse had never heard Nick laugh. The sound was… surprising. It didn’t repulse him, it didn’t feel fake, like some sort of copy. It felt… genuine. It made butterflies flutter in his stomach, and the corner of his mouth twitched at the contagious sound.

“Okay, okay, keep going,” the old Synth urged, and they placed three more cards down over the previous six. When they drew their cards, Nick threw out a jack. Danse, a queen.

“Well well, look at you, lucky stud,” Nick snickered, shoving all the cards towards Danse. “To the victor go the spoils.”

Danse laughed a little as he gathered them all up.

“Oh, so you  _ do  _ have a funny bone? I was worried you left it somewhere and you and I’d have to go searching for it.”

“I thought so, too,” Danse confessed, feeling slightly more at ease now that conversation had been directed away from their identities. “Maybe there’s a little humor left in me.”

“Well,” Nick said, “we’ll have to work on building it back up. Half the fun in being alive is being able to laugh at shit. Including ourselves.”

“Ourselves?”

“Yeah,” Nick nodded, before gesturing to Danse’s side of the table. “Not to alarm you, but uh… I may have lost a finger when I gave you those cards.” He lifted his metallic right hand, and sure enough, the ring finger was missing.

Danse recoiled a little, before glancing down. It was sticking out of his card pile, and he took a tentative hold of the digit. “Um.”

“No, just hand it back here, I’ll deal with it later,” the android promised. “Don’t need all my fingers to operate.”

So Danse gave Nick back his finger. “Doesn’t that hurt?” he asked.

“Nah, see, pain is an interesting concept for me. I have sensors that help me determine if something is a threat or not, so it’s like a facsimile of feeling. I’m capable of feeling basic things, like soft fur or the heat of a fire, but I don’t really experience  _ pain _ . The human emotions that go with it are still there though, so if I’m getting shot, of course I’m going to cry out in pain. It’s a natural reaction.”

“And… losing the finger?”

Nick blew air out of his lips. “I just get a voice in my head saying, ‘hey, dumbass, you’re missing a finger.’ Unless it’s forcibly ripped off of my hand, it’s not going to register as a threat to my health.”

“That seems reasonable.”

“Yeah,” Nick grunted, and then he refocused his attention to their card game. Danse did the same, but he glanced up at Nick a little more often, a little more curious. The butterflies in his stomach had not gone away. At length, Danse spoke up again, hoping that speaking more with Nick would help the feeling subside.

“... Nick… why have you been so unconditionally kind to me all this time? I’m-- I  _ was _ \-- a Brotherhood Paladin. My sole purpose in life was to eradicate your kind, and yet you’ve been nothing but kind to me. Why?”

The Synth chuckled, switching his cigarette from one side of his mouth to the other. “I’m not gonna say that I knew we’d get to this point, eventually, because I had no way of knowing you’d be a Synth. But a part of me knew that we’d be seeing a  _ lot  _ more of each other. A part of me was hoping for it, too. Because you  _ are  _ a good man, Danse. I could sense it in you from the moment I met you, even  _ if  _ you wanted to scrap me for parts. I guess what I’m trying to say here is… I want you. As my friend, I mean. And it never did anyone any good to make enemies. And… I trust you. I’ve always trusted you, despite your words and your ideologies. A part of me just… refused to believe that you could ever be capable of hurting me.”

Nick looked up at Danse, and the ex-Paladin had to avert his own gaze. That had  _ not  _ helped the nervous feeling in the pit of his stomach. At all. He bit his lip, refocusing on the game at hand after a quiet, “I see.” He was thankful that Nick left it at that, though a part of him knew that the android was still easily reading his emotions. Danse coughed and backtracked as a sudden thought crossed his mind.

“So you feel pain…” he said slowly. “Does that mean you also feel… well, are you capable of--”

Nick arched an eyebrow at Danse, and only then did the ex-Paladin really think about the implications of what he was asking. His face went red, and he looked down at his deck of cards. Before he could mutter out an apology, however… 

“I don’t have the physical parts for it,” Nick explained after a moment, “but over the course of a hundred years, you tend to get curious and experiment, see what parts of you they didn’t take out. The short answer is, yes, Danse. I feel pleasure, too. It’s a little more complicated, but I feel it. And, not to brag or anything, but…”

Nick gave Danse a dirty look, before a  _ tongue  _ lolled out of his mouth. Danse’s eyes nearly popped out of his head at the sight, before he averted his gaze.

“Not to brag or anything, but… I’d like to say I’m pretty good at  _ giving  _ pleasure, too.”

Danse nodded, still not looking up at Nick, even when Nick snickered at him.

… He may have been in trouble.

 

* * *

 

Evening fell, and the remaining residents in Sanctuary were informed via radio that Kori and the other companions had arrived to Bunker Hill. There was gunfire over the radio, and since it was one-way only, all they could do was sit and listen helplessly as Deacon gave the report.

“The moment we showed up, Synth Striders were getting teleported in. If you can hear the cracks of thunder in the distance, that’s them. Sanctuary may be too far away though. We’re currently traveling with an Institute Courser, and we’re about to breach the wall. I’ll keep you all updated on what happens, but… if Kori sends those Synths back to the Institute… I’d personally start clearing out of Sanctuary. It's clearly not safe, in that case, and... I don't know  _what_ I'll do .”

The signal clicked off, and they were left with white noise. Piper bit her lip and shook her head.

“Kori’s not going to do that to those Synths,” she said determinedly. “But I get why Deacon’s doubting. Even I’m not sure what Kori is going to do for sure, but I’m almost  _ certain _ those Synths are either free, or dead.”

“Either way,” Nick replied, “I guess now’s her defining moment. This is where we see who she truly is.”

Everyone waited with baited breath. They knew it wouldn’t be long-- Kori was efficient in her work, and with Deacon’s help, along with everyone else, there was little chance it’d take more than just ten or twenty minutes.  Danse leaned against the beam supporting the pavilion roof, staring out over the distance and watching the flashes of light. His heart pounded in his chest, almost as violently as if he was there at the battle himself. He closed his eyes, and imagined Kori’s screaming, her commands, her battle cries and victory shouts. He could hear it as clear as day.

The minutes ticked by. Then, the radio crackled to life again, loudly. There was heavy breathing on the other end.

“The Courser’s dead!” Deacon exclaimed. “She told the Synths they’re free and she turned on the asshole and sent a knife through his throat! Whisper, I can’t believe--”

The radio was off almost as fast as it had turned on, and the remaining residents were all in a flurry. Piper picked up the radio and shook it.

“Deacon, you asshole! You can’t just say that and then jump out on us!”

Sturges snatched the radio away from her. “Hey! I spent who knows how long putting this thing together, you don’t get to shake it like a soda bottle! Be nice to the man’s devices now, why don’t ya?”

Piper grumbled as Sturges set the device back onto the table. 

“Well… now we know where she’s decided to stand…” Nick stood up, a proud smirk on his features. “These creaky old parts need to move. Dogmeat, c’mere boy. Let’s head out for a walk.”

The old Synth and the dog left, and Danse took Nick’s seat as he watched them walk away. He stared down at his hands, still searching for something,  _ anything _ , that could have given him away as a Synth. There  _ had  _ to be some sort of universal fault all Synths shared.

Night came and went. There was no more word from the group Kori had gone out with, but it was around midnight before people started turning in. Danse was the last to retire, and he was haunted by the same dream as the night before, only louder. More accusatory. He awoke drenched in sweat and unable to move from the shock of it all for the longest time.

It was noon the next day when Jun made an announcement over the speaker system.

“H-hey, hey! They’re back! They’re… i-it’s the group, the people!”

Danse stood up from the desk in his house abruptly. That meant Kori was back. But he shouldn’t have been so excited. He sat back down, slowly, before he heard Curie outside.

“Where is Madame Kori?”

“We gotta turn on the radio,” Hancock urged them, and Danse watched from a crack in the boards on his window as the Ghoul rushed past his house, and the others followed close behind. Again, Danse stood, and he followed them out quickly.

Hancock was fiddling with the dial still by the time Danse joined them, but he turned to the right channel just in time, with Deacon’s help. After that, he backed away, keeping his distance from everyone. “Kori’s confronting Shaun outside of the Institue,” Hancock informed them all. “Said she’d be talking to him at  _ exactly _ noon. She’s got a microphone hiding on her.”

“But what for?” Nick asked, and he was instantly shushed by everyone present.

They waited anxiously, before an elderly sounding man began to speak.

“You know… in all my years, I’ve never set foot outside the Institute. Not once, since the day they brought me here. I’ve never had a reason. But now… this just confirms the truth I’ve always known. The Commonwealth… is dead. There’s no future here.”

Half of the residents erupted in shouts of indignation-- ‘ _ There is hope for the future! _ ’-- while the other half shushed them again. Danse took it all in with wide eyes.

This was Shaun. He was hearing Shaun. Kori’s child. The Father of the Institute.

“It wasn’t always like this,” Kori promised, and the sound of her voice made Danse’s heart skip a beat. She was speaking so… carefully. Like Shaun was something fragile. That if she spoke the wrong way, he wouldn’t be there anymore.  “It used to be different.”

“I can only imagine.” The elderly man took a deep breath. “Standing here, I’m reminded of how fortunate I am that I was spared a life in this wasteland. I know that to you, I was kidnapped from that vault. In truth, the Institute  _ rescued  _ me. Both of us, really.”

“Shaun… they left me on ice… for  _ sixty years _ …”

“They did. And for good reason.”

“What  _ fucking  _ reason!?” Hancock barked at the radio.

“I was the perfect candidate,” Shaun continued. “An infant with uncorrupted DNA. But if something were to go wrong… if I died… Well, the Institute realized a contingency plan was prudent. Another source of pre-war DNA, preferably related to their primary subject. It only made sense that my parents should fill that role. So, you were kept alive, and safe within the vault.”

“They could have taken them too!” MacCready slammed his fist on the table, eyes burning with anger. “At least they could have been together and happy!”

“... I’ll admit… when I had you released from Vault 111, I had no expectations that you’d survive out here, in all this.”

More roars of indignation erupted from the reveal in information, and more people were harshly quieted. Danse was clenching his fists, unbelieving of the lack of  _ care  _ for his own  _ mother  _ he heard in Shaun’s voice. And to hear that Shaun released her from Vault 111,  _ without  _ taking her to live with him… it was  _ insane _ . Why would a son do that to his own mother?

“To not only survive, but to manage to find me… to infiltrate the Institute itself…”

The man sounded like he was smiling.

“Extraordinary.”

Kori sounded on the brink of losing her composure, but she persevered. “Why let me out now, after all this time?”

“Well… that’s… hard to explain. Certainly, it was no longer necessary to keep you suspended… I… Well, I suppose I wanted to see what would happen. An… experiment, of sorts.”

“That is your  _ mother _ you’re speaking to,” Nick growled, straightening his fedora furiously. "And Kori is no damn  _experiment_."

Codsworth spoke up around the same time. “Shaun…” The bot sounded distraught, unbelieving that this is what could have become of the baby he’d nurtured before the world had fallen.

“Would the Commonwealth corrupt you, as it has everything else? Would you even survive? Perhaps, most curious to me… would you, after all this time, attempt to find me? Now, I know the answer.”

That was the moment Kori cracked. Danse heard it in her voice. The tears. The frustration. The hurt. “That’s  _ all  _ this is to you? All I am to you… just another experiment?”

“No, that’s not all,” Shaun assured her quickly, and there were several whispers of ‘bullshit!’. “But still… I’m glad it turned out the way it did. Soon, I hope… I hope you’ll understand. Everything I’ve done has been for the future. A future which, I hope, is not in jeopardy after recent events." His voice suddenly turned cold. Distant. Professional. "Bunker Hill did not go well for us. Would you care to explain what happened?”

There was a pause. Deacon leaned in closer to the radio.

“... I made a choice,” Kori sighed. “I let the Synths go free.”

“... Why would you do something so… stupid?!”

Danse wanted to punch this man and fracture all of his ribs. For… no other reason than because of the way he was speaking to Kori. It wasn’t personal.

“They were  _ afraid _ ,” Kori said. “They didn’t want to come back here, Shaun.”

“Afraid?!” Shaun sounded incredulous, furious. “They’re  _ machines! Artificial! They’re  _ **_incapable_ ** _ of being afraid! _ ”

Shaun continued to speak, but it was drowned out by  _ everyone  _ shouting angrily, pointing at the radio as if it was Shaun himself and their insults they threw his way could actually reach his ears. Danse stared at each and every one of them, shocked.  Even if they all had differing views on Synths, it was clear that they all agreed on one thing. According to them,  _ Synths could feel. Synths were capable of emotion,  _ in their eyes. He didn’t know whether to feel sick, or relieved. He only felt dizzy.

Danse stumbled forwards, scooping up the radio and retreating some ways with it in order to make everyone calm down. Everyone hovered over his shoulder, hushing and shoving each other. He held it close to himself, trembling and staring down at the device, as if he could will Kori to materialize from the soundwaves, to defend her. To protect her.

“How can I expect you to represent the Institute if this sort of thing continues?”

“Well what if I don’t  _ want  _ to represent the Institute?” Kori’s voice was unsteady and shaking. “Have you thought about that?”

There was a beat. “To be quite honest, no, I hadn’t considered that. It would be such a  _ poor  _ decision on your part, I had not given it much thought.”

The way this man was addressing Kori… son or not, all Danse wanted was to pull Kori away from him and snap his neck for speaking to her the way he was.

The wind blew into the microphone for a long time.

“... I can’t do it, Shaun. I can’t be a part of this anymore.”

The old man sighed. “I am… very sorry to hear that. I had hoped we could be something like a family again. I hoped you shared our vision for the future. And I’m afraid there’s no room for sentimentality, mother. If you are not with us, then you are against us. Whatever you do going forward, do  _ not  _ interfere with the Institute’s plans. I hope… I hope you can find  _ some  _ amount of peace.”

Danse was shaking at this point, restraining himself from throwing the radio across the street. This man was breaking Kori’s heart, tearing her apart from the inside out, and he had  _ no  _ remorse. He didn’t care about her. He didn’t want to be a  _ family  _ again. To him, Kori never was.

He was going to destroy her all over again.

Kori was seething-- they all could hear it, in the hiss of her voice. “I dreamed of you as an adult for so long,” she said, coldly, without any emotion at all. “Here you are. And I’m so, so disappointed.”

“Goodbye, Mother.”

There was a loud crashing sound, and then, silence. Danse’s eyes widened.

“ _ Kori!”  _ he screamed, as if she could hear him. As if his voice could carry through the one way signal.

“Danse, relax, it’s okay,” Piper urged, placing a hand on his shoulder. He recoiled at the touch, trembling, and Piper relented, keeping her distance. “Kori’s fine; that was the sound of the Institute’s teleportation. It was probably Shaun fucking off back to his rabbit hole; teleportation scrambles radio frequencies.”

Sure enough, a couple seconds later, Kori was back. She sighed, loudly, and when she spoke, Danse saw that broken woman standing on the edge of the Prydwen’s forecastle again, ready to fall. And he didn't know this time if he could catch her.

“So that’s it then,” she said to the audience she knew was listening. “It’s all over. I really am, at long last… the true Sole Survivor of Vault 111. Because I know now… my son died the day he was taken from my husband’s arms.”

She was silent, for a moment. When she spoke, her voice was stronger. More sure.

“We’re going to kill every last son of a bitch that did this. Every fucker in there that’s ever made us suffer, every last fucker who has ever terrorized the Commonwealth. Nick, Piper, Hancock, Danse… we’re going to fucking kill them all. Mark my fucking words, we are going to  _ war _ .”


	20. Chapter 20

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick update post work/before college, sorry for any unchecked mistakes/poor writing in advance!
> 
> Also, friendly reminder that I love comments! Any and all comments! I eat them up!

Kori returned to Sanctuary a day later. She no longer wore her Brotherhood uniform, instead in a coat similar to Hancock’s, only blue. Under the coat, she had armor, seeming to be Gunner in origin, but she wore it with pride, strutting into her home neighborhood proudly despite all that had transpired. Preston approached her excitedly, whistling as he took her in. The Sentry Bot charged towards the man, causing him to jump in surprise and let out an unmanly squeak. He recollected himself quickly enough, and straightened his hat with a huff before returning his attention to Kori.

“Damn, General,” he laughed as the Sentry Bot retreated. “I feel a little more at ease calling you that now that you look the part.”

Kori laughed half-heartedly, slugging Preston and knocking off his hat for emphasis. “I’m no General. I only have friends, not soldiers."  She stopped short when she came face-to-face with Danse, blinking rapidly. The man had come out of nowhere. Preston stopped as well with a quiet “oh,” once he saw them after picking up his hat. They all regarded each other, for a while, before Preston coughed.

“I, uh… we’ll… I’ll just… grab everyone… General…” and he excused himself from the two of them hastily. Kori and Danse watched him, before turning back to each other.

“How are you holding up?” she asked him.

“I could be asking the same of you.”

They both waited for the other to speak up first. Kori relented with a sigh. “I did what I had to to break myself away from Shaun. Maybe it was harsh. Maybe not. Maybe I was completely justified, after everything he’s done, everything he’s been a part of. Maybe… as his mother, I wasn’t. Maybe I should have still loved him. But…”

Kori sighed, and turned away. Once again, Danse found himself seized by the urge to comfort her, to hold her in his arms and tell her that everything was going to be alright. That she had so much on her shoulders, and she was like a tireless goddess in her work.  But still, he refrained. Kori shook her head, regardless.

“Were you okay while I was gone?”

“That doesn’t matter,” Danse replied simply. “You only have to put up with me for a few more days.”

“You know I don’t want you to go anywhere. You know that you still matter so much to me. You know that I don’t care what you are because it’s what you’ve always been. You haven’t changed, Danse.”

The ex-Paladin sighed through his nose, and looked away. He flinched when Kori took a hold of his cheek, forcing him to look back at her. It took all of his willpower not to lean into her touch.

“We’re both fucked. But we’re still here. We’ve  _ got  _ to make something out of that.”

Danse let his eyes slide shut.  “I don’t know what to make out of myself anymore.”

In the distance, someone called Kori’s name. Her hand jolted away from his face, as if she had been burned, and Danse stepped back and away. Confliction was clear in her eyes as she glanced between him and MacCready over the hill, before quickening her pace to join the sniper with the others that had gathered in the middle of the street. Danse remained where he stood, before deciding to join the others, just in case what Kori would have to say could involve him in any shape or form.

“We’d better discuss what to do about the Institute,” Preston said to them all, before looking to Kori for input. It was Hancock who spoke up first, however.

“I say, we  _ attack _ ,” he said, emphasising the end of ‘attack’. “Take the fight to the Institute, those no-good human trafficking sons of bitches.”

“I’m all for that,” Preston agreed, “but we don’t have any way to really hit them yet. Kori, didn’t you get a holotape with Institute data on it? With any luck, Sturges might be able to find some way in”

“Ingram gave me back the original once the Brotherhood had made a copy,” she confirmed, and she handed it over to Sturges.

“I’ll start digging into this and see if I can make heads or tails of it,” the Minuteman mechanic promised. “Those bastards sure aren’t going to fall for that teleport hijacker trick twice.”

“In the meantime, we all need to focus on building up our strength while Sturges is working his end. No half measures. This time, when we attack, we finish the job, once and for all.”

Deacon, who had been standing silently across from Danse, cleared his throat. “With your banishment from the Institute, it’s pretty safe to say that we’re not getting in touch with Patriot. I’m just letting you know right now, the Railroad’s got nothing. We can’t help you guys out on this one. I'll do what I can for your sake, but I'm just another gun at this point.”

“So it’s just the Minutemen then,” Kori said, and Deacon nodded in confirmation. “Not ideal, but we’ll make it work. So Preston, if we don’t have enough forces to fight the Institute, then that means our next course of action is to get more settlements on our side, enlist residents of the Commonwealth into the Minutemen.”

“That’s right,” the man confirmed, “I know of several locations throughout the Commonwealth that are in dire need of assistance. If you’ll come here, I’ll mark them on your Pip-Boy map for you.”

“I’ll set out tomorrow, then,” Kori promised as she moved next to the Minuteman leader. She looked up then to the other companions as Preston worked. “As for the rest of you, you’re all more than welcome to head out and see what you can do as well. As far as I’m concerned, we’re  _ all  _ Minutemen now. Am I understood?”

Everyone nodded in confirmation, before Danse spoke up.

“I’m going to assume you meant ‘everyone except Danse.’ Yes?”

He blinked in surprise when Kori shook her head.

“You too, Danse. We’re going to need as much help as we can get. But you’re not allowed to head out alone. I’ll give everyone an assigned partner, and the both of you will stick together and stay out of Brotherhood territory. With how long this might take though, it may lengthen your stay in the Commonwealth.”

She raised a brow. “Will that be an issue?”

Danse took a moment to find his words. “No. That’s-- I’ll manage. I’ll manage.”

The vault dweller nodded her approval, and Preston released her arm, patting it. “All good to go. Hand out assignments as you feel necessary. We’re all at your service.”

Kori took a look at the locations pinned on her Pip-Boy, humming to herself as everyone waited for their directions. “Nick, Piper, I assume you both know where Hangman Alley is, and since it’s close to Diamond City, you know that type of terrain like the back of your hands. Make quick work of them. Mac, Hancock, you’re both off to Greentop Nursery. Cait, Curie, be nice to each other and clear out the ghouls at Sunshine Tidings and set up a beacon. Preston, you and I will make our way to Jamaica Plane. Which leaves…”

She looked up, and glanced between Deacon and Danse. Danse looked to Deacon, the other man with his hands in his pockets and whistling as he stared down at his feet.

“... I’m sending you two to Outpost Zimonja. Filled with Raiders. I trust you both to work together to take them all out.”

“Yeah. Sure.” Deacon bit his lip. “We’ll be in and out.”

Danse furrowed his brow. Normally, Deacon was cocky and sarcastic, and even if it was to hide his secrets close to his chest, it was what was considered the true him. This reserved and nervous Deacon was something new and concerning.

Kori gave the Railroad spy an interesting look at well, before turning back to Danse. “Please,” she begged, as the others dispersed to spend the remainder of their days preparing for tomorrow, “be safe.”

“I don’t think my instincts will allow me to do otherwise,” the ex-Paladin sighed, running a hand through his hair. “We’ll meet at the bridge out of Sanctuary at dawn, Deacon. Be well prepared.”

The other man nodded, and walked quickly away to his and MacCready’s shared house. Danse gave Kori one last look as she stood discussing plans with Preston, before heading to prepare himself.

 

* * *

 

The walk to their destination was uncharacteristically quiet. Danse had no comment about the terrain, and no desire to discuss what the plan would be once they arrived. Deacon had no false stories to tell, no snarky comments, and no directions of his own. They were both just silent, letting the wind carry any and all conversation away.

Danse didn’t like it. It was too quiet.

They were almost to the Outpost by the time either of them said anything, and it was Deacon who spoke first, to Danse’s surprise.

“So… have the nightmares started yet?”

Danse did a double take over at Deacon. “What?”

“You know. The nightmares? About a duplicate of you, making fun of you, taunting you, ‘you’re not the only you,’ blah blah blah.”

Danse stiffened up, but kept his pace quick. “How did you know?”

“About 99% of all the Synths the Railroad frees gets them,” the spy shrugged. “I’d have horrific nightmares about killing myself in cold blood if I knew I was a clone of somebody who’d probably been replicated at  _ least  _ twenty times, too.”

“Deacon, you are  _ not  _ helping.”

“But I know that’s why you have them, right?” Deacon looked up at Danse from under his sunglasses. “I’m not trying to help. Not yet. Right now, I’m trying to  _ understand _ . Every Synth is different when they get to that existential crisis point in their life. The lucky ones never remember they’re a Synth at all, but those that do… they all take it in different ways. And at a glance, it seems to me you’re not taking your revelation well at  _ all _ .”

“Thank you for reminding me.” Danse glowered over at Deacon, and the other man just shrugged, stuffing his hands in his pockets.

“Listen, like I said, I don’t know enough about your inner conflict to offer any good advice. I’m just letting you know what I’m seeing, and kind of… hoping you’ll talk about what’s going through your mind? I’m not sure. What I  _ do  _ know is that you need help. Help that I don’t know how to offer, but here I am, anyways.”

Danse narrowed his eyes. “You don’t do things out of the goodness of your heart.”

“You’re damn right I don’t. Get on your stomach-- we’re staying low while we scout this place out.”

With a roll of his eyes, Danse acquiesced, crawling army style along Deacon up the hill, until they could peer over at the shack filled with Raiders some ways away. “So if you don’t care, then  _ why? _ It’s not just for Kori’s sake, is it?”

“Ooh, you got me there. You Brotherhood types are smarter than I take you for.” Deacon pulled a sniper rifle off of his back, using the scope to take a look at their opposition. “So yeah, it’s not for Kori’s sake. It’s more for the sake of… you’re a Synth. The Railroad takes care of Synths. Do I like you? No. Absolutely not. So is this for the Railroad? Primarily? But is this also because you’re a decent living being and you deserve to get help for how shitty you feel? Yes.”

He pulled away from the scope to look at Danse.

“I want to help you, because you deserve it, as a living person.”

Danse and Deacon stared at one another, before the spy redirected his attention back to the camp once the ex-Paladin remained silent. “Okay. So we’ve got their leader in Power Armor, and I’m going to guess that’s his second in command with the Fat Man.”

“You’re not going to have us just rush in, I hope.”

“What do you take me for, a Super Mutant? No, I’m gonna snipe that asshole. But that means everyone else is going to be on high alert right after, so we’ll have to act fast. I’m going to guess their head-honcho might pick up the Fat Man once his buddy goes down, but if I can snipe him too, we’ll be good.”

“I’ll wait to open fire until I know it’s safe to give away our position,” Danse said, hunkering back down in the grass. Deacon scooted forwards, adjusting the scope carefully.

“Wind’s blowing left… and…”

Danse watched as the Raider leader’s second in command tipped over backwards, the bullet passing clean through his head. The man in the Power Suit jumped, startled, and looked around wildly as he barked orders. Deacon rushed to reload.

“Bullet number two…” 

Deacon fired again, and he rolled over and laughed in victory once the man in Power Armor fell over dead.

“Okay,” he said, “let’s sweep in, finish the job.”

Danse nodded, and the two of them rushed out. The five remaining raiders shouted in indignation, knowing that these two were the cause of their leader’s deaths, and opened fire. Deacon slid to the ground, pumping two of the men with bullets to incapacitate them. Danse jumped over an old rusted car frame, drop-kicking into a Raider and turning to shoot another in the eye. The man shrieked in pain, stumbling away, and Danse had the breath knocked out of him with a punch to his chest from the other man he’d knocked down.

Deacon was there instantly; he positioned his foot beneath the Raider’s head, kicking up with a sharp jolt, and Danse cringed as he heard the Raider’s neck snap, his skull detaching from the rest of his spine. He was whacked away by a board, the fifth Raider finally joining the group, but with three out for the count and one already dead, Danse was able to get to his feet without any interruptions. He picked up his laser rifle and fired into the back of the Raider attacking Deacon, and when the man turned around to charge for Danse, Deacon shot him in the neck. Danse flinched at the spray of blood that hit him, but was otherwise unfazed.

That left two dead, and three left. The others were still in various states in pain, one Danse had blinded, and the other two internally bleeding. It was easy work to take out those remaining Raiders, and before long, the air was still.

The two men took a moment to catch their breaths, and then Deacon cracked his back with a grunt.

“Welp. That went about as well as could be expected. Let’s get to work on setting up a recruitment beacon, and then we’ll head back to Sanctuary. I call the beacon.”

“I’ll build the generator, then,” Danse replied, and the two set off in separate directions to find materials to complete the task. The time spent apart allowed Danse some peace and quiet to think.

He knew that Deacon was a member of the Railroad, but he hadn’t even considered how much time he had spent with Synths they’d freed from the Institute. He’d likely come across all sorts of different personalities in his line of work. But Synths were stripped of their memory once they were set loose, so that they could form their own lives, their own futures.  _ That  _ was what was puzzling and troubling Danse for some reason he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He made a guess as to why it was bothering him, and asked Deacon about it once they came back together with their parts.

“How are Synth’s memories wiped before they’re set off into the world?”

Deacon went rigid, but only briefly. The only reason Danse had noticed was because he was watching the man with a close eye. “Well, first we have to escort them from pickup locations to a safehouse, while we wait for our contact in the Memory Den to make the proper preparations. Once everything is set, we take the new Synth to Goodneighbor, and because of that nifty chip in their head, we can connect to it and use it to alter their memories. Out with the bad, in with the… not necessarily good, but… new. It usually results in some pretty drastic personality alterations as well, so really, freed Institute Synths are kind of like… new people. Of course, some Synths are going to share the same memories, but we try to randomize it as best as we can.”

Danse ignored the sick feeling bubbling up in his stomach at hearing this process, about how these people were given fake lives to smile at. He shook his head, and focused more on the generator that was slowly coming together. “It sounds like a risky process. That’s interfering with a lot of the brain’s processes.”

“You’d be… well, I’m not actually sure how you’d feel to learn that… we lose a  _ lot  _ of the Synths that come to us to that process alone. The memory transfer fails, and they’re left in a vegetative state. But… they take that risk anyways, even though they’re full aware of what could happen.  _ Anything  _ is better than the life they left behind.”

Danse looked up at Deacon from his work with a frown, before shaking his head and going back to it.  “Do you think they all feel that way?”

The Railroad spy stopped. “What do you mean?”

Danse set down his tools. “Kori gave us a detailed report of what goes on in the Institute, how they function, what daily life is like, and while, yes, the Synths are slaves… there’s no radiation. There’s clean food, water. There’s no threat of being shot dead because you have something someone else wants. Is excessive physical labor really all that terrible in exchange for guaranteed safety? I’m sure they all hear about the world outside. Why would they trade in their safety for a world they don’t know how to handle themselves in?”

Now Deacon was looking at Danse with a frown. “It’s not just physical labor. It’s abuse-- physical, emotional, mental, it’s gaslighting and manipulation. They’re not just treated as the lowest class. They’re not even treated as living beings, because everyone there is so convinced that Synths can’t  _ possibly  _ have human emotions, even though they have the same brains. You can’t make a pseudo-human out of a human… and not expect them to feel the same things. And I don’t know about you, Danse, but I’d rather spend my whole life on the run and happy, than stuck in paradise and treated like junk.”

Danse had no reply to that. He set his lips, and returned to getting the generator up and running for the Recruitment beacon.

 

* * *

 

The skies were grey and tumultuous, and Danse was just as troubled as the looming storm on their way back to Sanctuary, once the beacon was sending out its signal to anyone in the area. Deacon had returned to being quiet and reserved, even more so than before, and kept an arm’s distance between himself and Danse at all times. Something was nagging at the back of Danse’s mind, something he couldn’t place no matter how hard he tried. He knew it had something to do with Synths and their memories, but the exact question he wanted to ask just wouldn’t form in his mind. But it was likely now or never, since they were stuck together. He had to figure this out, before it was too late.

It finally hit him, on the edge of Sanctuary, like a crashing Vertibird.

“Deacon!”

The Railroad spy jumped, the shout of his name taking him off guard. “I’m right here, Danse, you don’t have to--”

“Does the Institute send out Synths with false memories of their own? Implants, experiments, to see how human they can make them without others being suspicious of them?”

Deacon stopped in his tracks, and Danse did the same, inside of Sanctuary now. Several others had already returned, and they were milling about in the nearby vicinity.

“The Institute wouldn’t have anything to gain by doing that; they already know their Synths pass as human if they’re put out into the world. If they ever send any out, it’s to replace someone they want out of the picture, so the Synths are going to have their memories intact, to know what their purpose is.”

So Danse  _ was  _ an escaped Synth, that was confirmation of that, but that meant… that meant that Danse had been through the Railroad. He wanted to know more about who he had been.

“Deacon.” Danse approached the man, and when he flinched and took a step back, that was all he needed to see. That was all Danse needed. His expression darkened, and his hand twitched as the world narrowed down to him, and the Railroad spy before him.

“... you know something about my escape. Something personal.”

Deacon’s head jolted back. “I-- what? No, Danse-- do you know how many Synths go through the Railroad  _ daily _ \--”

“Don’t you lie to me!” Danse had Deacon’s shirt gathered up in his fists, and he pressed him up against a house wall, seething. Deacon’s eyebrows shot up, lips parted in a gasp, but he didn’t struggle. Someone rushed around the corner at the shouting and the ruckus.

“Danse?! What the fuck!” Piper shouted, which caught the attention of the others that had returned. Nick, MacCready, and Hancock came rushing. Lightning lit up the darkening sky as Hancock drew his pistol, but Nick hissed, pushing it back down to his side.

“What the  _ hell  _ are you doing, Danse?” the old Synth demanded to know.

“What do you know, Deacon?!” Danse commanded. “Talk!”

“Put me down first, so we can talk like civilized people.”

Danse pulled Deacon back, and shoved him into the wall again.

“ _ I’m not a fucking person!  _ You’re going to explain to me what you know about my past, and you’re going to do it  _ now! _ ”

“Put Deacon down right  _ now _ , Danse!” Hancock lifted his pistol again, but Deacon stopped him with a bark.

“Cool it! I’ll talk! I’ll talk. Pistol down, Hancock.”

Begrudgingly, the Ghoul obeyed, but he was still tense, arms jittery. Danse’s shoulders heaved, and he waited expectantly for Deacon to start talking. After the other man gathered his breath and his senses, he began to speak.

“It was ten years ago,” Deacon said. “The thing about liberating Synths is, you tell them to go far, far away, and never look back. The way we get their memories to work, is the first week or so of their life is something they won’t remember, so they forget the Railroad, they forget the Commonwealth, and wherever they end up in that timeframe, that’s when things start to cement.”

Deacon took a deep breath.

“I was on the mission to escort you across the Commonwealth. I still remember it like it was yesterday, because of your fascination with these posters that had been scattered around the city. I’d be dragging you along, and you’d stop and stare, and you’d ask me, ‘Do you know the Brotherhood? Are you friends with the Brotherhood? What are they wearing?’ And I just told you to keep going. Keep running. We didn’t have time for questions.”

Deacon tilted his head back as Danse’s grip began to loosen.

“I think what I remembered about you most was how… fearless you were. Granted, I think it was out of stupidity and obliviousness more than anything, but… you were just so… curious about everything. You barely even talked about the Institute. You just wanted to go explore. Most Synths, they’re not like that. They’re frightened of everything, they’ve been beaten and oppressed for so long, but not you. You were confident, and you wanted to know  _ everything _ . I almost just dragged you away from the safe house and told you to run without the memory swap, because you didn’t need it. But… it was just protocol. I was just following orders. You were injured, anyways. It’s how you got that scar on your eye, after all. We were ambushed by a bunch of raiders and you just barely avoided getting a sword through your head.”

Danse shook his head, blinking back tears. Thunder rolled in the distance. He’d wondered about that scar himself, but it wasn’t important right now. “Why… why didn’t you tell me?! When we first met at the Starlight Drive-in, why didn’t you say anything!?”

“Do you honestly think you would have believed me? The Brotherhood Paladin, who loved the Codex like his wife and Elder Maxson like an illicit lover… do you honestly think if I’d told you, you would have said, ‘oh, wow, of course, stranger I just met! That makes total and complete sense! I believe you completely!’ So I didn’t tell you then, and I didn’t tell you  _ after  _ you knew you were a Synth, for this exact reason. It would just complicate everything. Truth is… you never expect to see a Synth you freed ever again. Most of them wander off far enough that it’s not even a possibility.”

Deacon lowered his head to stare at Danse.

“And I can’t believe someone as pure and good as you were could have been so horribly  _ corrupted  _ by the Brotherhood of Steel. I didn’t want to believe it was you when I first saw you, but you’ve got that same fucking puppy-dog look in your eyes, that same curiosity, that urge to learn. It never fucking went away.”

“The Brotherhood didn’t  _ corrupt _ me,” Danse snarled. “They were my  _ family _ .”

“Just like the Railroad was,” the Railroad spy said, flinching as the first few drops of rain hit his nose. “But even now, you’ll never see us that way, will you? You’ll always be some pig-headed cunt that always thinks he’s right and Synths and Ghouls are all abominations of nature. What you were before the Brotherhood doesn’t matter anymore. You’re a Synth, and you’ve got to come to terms with that before it’s too late.”

Danse snarled at Deacon, shaking. “How do I come to terms with being a mass produced clone? How do I do that, Deacon? I’m not special, and the Railroad didn’t help me like you claim. They should have just given up, let all of the Synths like me, and all the others, rot down in the Institute where we  _ belong _ . Like the machines that we are.”

Something in Deacon snapped at that.

“Maxson should have done us  _ all _ a favor and wiped you out.”

Danse re-tightened his grip on Deacon’s shirt, and headbutted him, before tossing him to the ground.

“Fuck, Danse,  _ stop! _ ” Piper screamed. Nick held her back, but that didn’t stop Hancock. The Ghoul surged forwards, charging towards Danse, and he punched the ex-Paladin in his side, pushing him away from the Railroad spy.

“You wanna pick on someone your own size, dumbass?” Hancock taunted, and he jolted back to narrowly avoid being punched across the jaw. MacCready took opportunity of their scuffling to rush to Deacon, dragging his unconscious form away from the two men.

“Two freaks of nature? I can deal with that.” Danse nodded to himself, before lunging for Hancock again. The Ghoul side-stepped his attack, before taking a hold of Danse’s outstretched arm and twisting it behind his back.

“Sloppy, Paladin,” he snarled, and Danse kicked at Hancock’s feet behind him, causing the Ghoul to fall. He slammed down in the wet dirt, black eyes blinking in surprise, and he jumped back before Danse could bring down his foot on his stomach.

“Danse,  _ knock it off! _ ” Nick warned.

Danse grit his teeth together as a fist landed in his chest, then another across his jaw, sending him spinning with the motion. He used his own momentum to keep spinning, and landed a blow in Hancock’s side, before kicking him backwards. Hancock stumbled over the uneven terrain, holding the wounded spot, and then he drew a knife.

“All right,  _ that’s it _ ,” Nick shouted. Danse looked back just in time to see the shock baton, before it was pressed into his spine. The ex-Paladin shouted, but it was cut off as every part of him constricted, muscles going stiff and useless.

He collapsed to the ground a few moments later, face in the mud and body twitching with uncooperative muscles. He managed to roll over onto his back, and he stared up at the black, raining sky. Hancock, Nick, and Piper loomed over him, but their voices were lost as he gradually slipped into unconsciousness.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S. TIME. FOR. THE. NICK/DANSE. TO. BEGIN.
> 
> **And ALSO, WARNING: There is self harm/blood/gore in this chapter! It is brief, but it is there!**

Danse didn’t leave his house for days after the fight with Deacon and Hancock. Even when the end of the week came and he was technically free to leave without interference… Danse stayed inside. He’d been escorted back to his house and ordered not to leave until Kori returned, and he did so without argument. The last anyone saw of him was the ex-Paladin standing in the darkened living room, chin held high even as he nursed his wounded pride, and Nick closed the door behind everyone as they left.

And even when Kori did return… he didn’t come out.

They knew he was alive. There was evidence of it from the food that would go missing from the kitchen at night, and the garbage that would be by his door in the morning. He was alive, but he wasn’t speaking with anyone. His windows were boarded-- he’d boarded them up the first day he’d been in Sanctuary-- and no one could see him inside. But he was there. Everyone knew it. But with the door locked, and every other conceivable way inside blocked, no one knew what to do.

They gave up on trying to get him to come out by the third day. They had to drag Kori away from his porch so that she could continue her work on gathering recruits for the Minutemen. Then they had to drag away Curie, when she did the same even after everyone else had given up.

But even still, on the fifth day of Danse’s isolation, out of the blue, Nick sat down on his porch first thing in the morning, and only left once curfew came around. And he did the same on the sixth day. And then the seventh. And for many, many days after that.

No one interfered with Nick. The old Synth sat at Danse’s porch every day. He talked about everything, and anything. He read pre-war books from start to finish. He quoted great historical figures that he could remember, and gave context to their words. He talked about his past, the different things he had been through. He told him about his fiancee, and how he deeply missed her, every day. All of the love and the hate he had seen in the world. The different people he had met, and how they had changed his life for better or for worse. The women (and men) who had attempted to woo him, despite his robotic nature. How about half of them had been disappointed in finding he had no genitals (he laughed heartily about that). His arrival to Diamond City, teaching the residents to trust him despite their previous interactions with the Institute. He told him about the day Kori saved him from Vault 114, and their adventures in hunting for Kellogg.

And when he was out of all of those things, he still remained on that porch. Let his thoughts wander, and spoke his mind freely.

It was the eleventh day of Danse’s isolation when Nick got two words out of Danse.

“Go away.”

The old Synth blinked in surprise at the sound of Danse’s voice. He was directly on the other side of the door he’d had his back to. Likely had for all these days, now that he was thinking about it. And after all this time, he'd finally decided to speak.

“... Why?” Nick asked.

Silence. Then:

“... you’re wasting your time.”

Nick just shrugged. “Time you spend the way you want to spend it is not time wasted.”

He waited for a response. There was nothing.

"You're scaring the hell out of me, Danse. Come on. If you won't come out, will you at least let me come in? We can talk, face to face. I'm not here to judge you. I'm not here to scold you. I just want to talk."

But Danse spoke no more to the android on the other side of his door.

So Nick kept talking. Just like all of the days before.

On the thirteenth day, Nick gave Danse the last of his quotes as the evening came to an end.

“Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.”

He waited to hear any sort of response, and was not surprised to be met with only silence. He spoke again.

“Nobody can predict the future. You just have to give your all to the relationship you're in and do your best to take care of your partner, communicate and give them every last drop of love you have. I think one of the most important things in a relationship is caring for your significant other through good times and bad.”

Still, no response. Nick checked the time on his watch, and knew he had time for just once more, before he would have to return home.

“Love myself I do. Not everything, but I love the good as well as the bad. I love my crazy lifestyle, and I love my hard discipline. I love my freedom of speech and the way my eyes get dark when I'm tired. I love that I have learned to trust people with my heart, even if it will get broken. I am proud of everything that I am and will become.”

He waited a little longer than normal for a response. Any sort of response. The frustrated banging of a head on a door, the shuffle of feet, a sigh. But, as with all of the days before, there was nothing. Nick sighed, and stood, stamping out his cigarette.

“Well… you know where to find me,” Nick muttered, a little drop in his heart at the responding silence that hurt a little less than the day before. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets before heading down the steps, but stopped at the bottom.

"... Damnit, Danse. I don't know what the hell to do. I don't know what to tell you that I haven't already. Being a Synth does _not_ make who you are any less meaningful. It took me many long years of suffering and terrible thoughts to come to terms with myself. I don't want you to get stuck in the same rut I did. And cooping yourself up like that, refusing to allow the human inside to to exist, to breathe... that's the worst torture I think anyone could inflict on themselves."

He stepped back up to the door, letting his forehead rest against it.

"Come out, Danse. Let me help you. That's all I want, is to help. Please."

The door vibrated against his head when something hit against the other side. Nick didn't budge, and there was no more sound. He waited for five minutes; Kori wasn't present to enforce curfew. He could do it.

But the same sickening silence washed over him again, after all those days. Nick snarled to himself, and hit his fist against the door himself before finally heading back to his own house, feeling bewildered and useless.

The old Synth closed the door behind him once he arrived, and switched on the lights, removing his jacket and hanging it on the coatrack. He stretched, listening to wires and metal pop back into place, and headed to his desk to sort through paperwork for Ellie to pick up in the morning. That would help to calm him down. She’d been very good and brave to make the trip between Diamond City and Sanctuary for the sake of business, so he always made certain that during her weekly visits, he always had everything done and ready to go back to the agency.

As he took a seat at his desk and picked up a pen, his thoughts wandered back to Danse. The garbage at his door was not _nearly_ enough to imply that he had been eating reasonably. Maybe, the next day, if he brought Danse something...

No. Focus, Nick. Paperwork. Danse is not a priority past curfew. He shook his head, and refocused his efforts, before there was a soft knock at his door.

The old Synth tensed. Yes, curfew had  _ just  _ begun, but no one had come to knock on his door past 11:30 before. Slowly, he stood, and made certain that the safety was off on his pistol as he walked slowly to the door. He jumped when, as he was only halfway across the room, there was another knock, slightly more urgent. He quickened his approach, but he stood to the side of the door rather than directly in front of it.

“Who is it?” he called, hand resting on the hilt of his weapon.

If Nick had breath to spare, it would have caught in his throat at the sound of Danse’s voice.

“Please help,” he croaked.

The old Synth rushed to open the door not a moment later, and his arms snapped up to catch Danse when the man fell forwards. He supported the other man’s weight, panic taking over as wheezing breaths rasped in his ear.

“Danse, Jesus, what the hell--”

Nick stopped short. As he was speaking, he’d been pushing Danse back to get a better look at him, and there was blood on Nick’s right arm and side. Danse's complexion itself was as white as sheet, and his eyes fluttered wildly. When Nick glanced down, he gagged and nearly dropped at the sight that greeted him.

Danse’s left forearm was completely sliced open, from wrist to the crook of his elbow on the inside. There was fresh and crusted blood alike, and there was no telling how much blood Danse had lost before he finally came to Nick for help. The bone was clearly visible within, a thin strip of white that reminded Nick how utterly  _ inhuman  _ he himself was.

“What. Did. You. Do.” Nick demanded to know, fumbling blindly for his trench coat and hastily wrapping it around Danse’s arm as the other man swayed.

“I had to know,” he mumbled, staring at Nick with glassy, distant eyes, too hollow and dark. “I had to know if… if any part of me was metal… something I could show everyone, prove I’m a monster, a freak…”

“God damn it, Danse,” Nick cursed, holding Danse’s arm firmly and marching out of his house and back up the hill, towards where Curie, Piper, and Cait were situated. “Shit, why would you-- fuck, how-- when did you slice yourself open?”

“You were still…” Danse stopped speaking for a moment, leaning heavily on Nick for support. “You were still outside.”

“Jesus fucking Christ!” Nick cried out softly, hurrying his and Danse’s pace. Danse’s pace slowed as they were passing Kori’s house, but Nick kept him moving.

“I miss her,” he whispered, straining to go to Kori’s home instead. “Does she miss me? I... I need to see her...”

Nick swallowed, even though the motion was completely unnecessary. He elected not to inform Danse about how she herself had nearly shut down socially, and was solely focused on recruitment for the Minutemen, and nothing else. She hadn’t even returned to Sanctuary today, still out and about the Commonwealth in her quest.

The two of them marched up to Curie’s door, and Nick knocked loudly. “Curie! It’s an emergency, it’s Danse!”

The lights within were on in an instant, and Curie flung the door open, Piper hovering behind. Curie gave out a cry of alarm upon seeing the too-pale ex-Paladin and his bleeding arm, and she ushered them in quickly, taking Danse from Nick, while Piper pressed herself flat against the wall, cursing, but thankfully not asking any questions. Curie set Danse down on the couch, before rushing to the bathroom to likely grab medical supplies, and the reporter followed close behind. Nearly the moment they left, Danse was trying to get up again, but Nick held him down.

“I want Kori,” he whispered, sounding on the verge of shouting and crying.

“You’ll see her soon enough,” Nick promised, running his left hand through Danse’s hair soothingly. “We need to get your arm patched up first, pal.”

“Oh.” Danse blinked, before looking down at his arm. Somehow, even  _ more  _ color drained from his already sheet-white face, and he tilted his head back with a groan.

Curie came rushing back into the room at the same time, humming worriedly to herself as she hastily prepared a needle and thread, while Piper lugged in a container of blood packs.

“He’s gonna need blood, doc,” the old Synth warned her. “You got a biometric scanner? I’ll get you his blood type.”

Curie handed him one without looking up, and she got to work immediately on closing up Danse’s arm. The ex-Paladin hissed and thrashed with his body, but his arm remained still, and the Synth-woman was quick and flawless in her work. Nick peeled off some of the crusted blood from Danse’s arm, and placed it into the device.

“A' positive,” he informed her once the scan was complete, before Piper rummaged through the crate of blood packs she had brought in with her. She found the correct package, and handed it to Curie, while Curie handed Nick a bottle of purified water and a wet rag.

“Clean the wound as best as you can, and I’ll get the drip ready,” she said, standing and dragging over her own coat rack to use to hold up the blood bag.

“Where’s Kori?” Danse slurred, and again, he attempted to stand, but Nick held him down as he cleaned his arm.

“Kori’s not in Sanctuary right now,” Nick informed him, “but she’ll be back soon, don’t worry. She’ll be very happy to see you.”

The ex-Paladin grunted, turning his head away from Nick. “Christ, Danse,” Piper murmured to herself, standing up quickly and rushing to the kitchen with a rag, likely to place over his burning forehead. 

Curie hurried back around to Danse, needle ready for insertion, and she began tapping his right arm to make the veins pop out. 

“I’m just another weight keeping her from flying,” Danse said. “She deserves… deserves better than me. It’s for the best that she doesn’t love me.”

Nick hesitated for just a moment at that, while Curie hadn’t even heard him at all. Piper was still in the kitchen, out of earshot. As the doctor inserted the needle into Danse’s arm, and blood started dripping in to fill his drained system, Nick whispered, “Do you love her?”

Danse nodded wearily. The corners of his eyes were filled with tears, before he closed them, and slipped into unconsciousness.

Nick stared at Danse for a long time after that, while Curie took over the task of cleaning Danse’s arm and bandaging him up. The old Synth clutched onto Danse's right hand in both of his own as the world slowly devolved to the room they were in, and the frantic women within. Once Curie was finished in her task, she sat back with a huff, checking Danse’s heart rate. Piper also returned, laying a cold, damp cloth across the ex-Paladin’s forehead.

“He is still going strong,” she informed Nick. “He’s just resting now. He will be alright.” As she said this, she applied a stimpack to his left shoulder, just for good measure, and Piper began to prepare food and drink for him when he woke up.

“We shouldn’t have left him alone for as long as we did,” the old bot grumbled, rubbing his robotic thumb over Danse’s left hand as he held it. His eyes didn’t leave the ex-Paladin. “We should have forced our way in after the fifth day. Kori gave me the task of keeping him company, but when it’s a one way street--”

“She was afraid of escalating a bad situation,” Piper said, setting down some bread and water. “I understand her reasoning, but you’re absolutely right, Nick… with Danse’s mental state the way it was, it wasn’t smart to leave him alone for so long. How did you find him like this?”

“He came to me. I’d just left his house, and he came to mine. It was a cry for help. This was  _ all  _ a cry for help, and we brushed it under the rug until it was too late.”

Curie sat down next to Nick in the armchair, placing her head in her hands with a heavy sigh. “I have not dealt with depression enough to be able to deal with such… heavy levels professionally. I still have so much to learn.”

“Hey, it's okay, Curie. You did good today,” Nick assured her with a pat to her knee, and Piper mirrored his statement. “Right now, we just need to keep Danse stable until he’s got enough blood in his system again. That, you can do. I know you can. I’ll stay up with him-- you two go ahead and go back to sleep. I’ll get you if anything comes up.”

“Yes… very well then.” Curie stood slowly, staring at Danse nervously as he slept. Given that Nick had very little need for sleep, she held full confidence in him. “My room and Piper’s is the one on the left. Cait is a relatively heavy sleeper, but just to be certain… please do come to my room and knock rather than shouting across the house, if you can help it.”

“I will,” Nick promised. “You get some rest, Curie. Everything’s going to be okay.”

The Synth woman nodded, stepping away from the couch and back down the hall to her room. Nick narrowed his eyes up at Piper, who hadn’t budged an inch. “You too, Wright.”

“You sure you don’t need a hand with this? I don't mind...”

The old bot leaned back, offering up a gentle smile. “I don’t sleep, Piper, you know this. I rest, but I don’t sleep. I’ve got this handled. You’re only human, after all.”

The news reporter frowned, looking over at Danse. “Yeah… I guess…” And, with that final statement, she was gone.

Nick waited for her to be out of sight, before bringing Danse’s hand to his lips, holding it close and closing his eyes, knowing this may be his only chance to hold him this way. To hold him this close without any repercussions. He silently cursed himself, for not doing more, for not being more open with the ex-Paladin, but only for a moment, before resigning himself to watching the minutes tick by until morning. What was done was done; no use on dwelling what could have been now that it was in the past.

For now, he could have this. For now, this would suffice.

 

* * *

 

No one asked questions when they saw Nick escorting Danse from Curie’s house to his own the next evening. The ex-Paladin remained silent, holding his head high as he walked side by side with Nick. MacCready glared at him from his house porch as Deacon talked to him, but he looked back to the Railroad man soon enough. Everyone else kept their distance, however. Even Hancock didn’t even spare Danse a glance.

When they were inside Nick’s house, and the door was closed, Danse stood in the middle of the room, uncertain what to do with himself. His right hand held his bandaged arm meekly, like keeping his hand there could speed the healing process. Nick gently lead him to a table in the kitchen, having him sit while he rummaged through the cupboards for food.

“Instamash okay?” he asked, looking back at Danse.

All he responded with was a noncommittal shrug, staring away from the old Synth.

Nick prepared the food in silence. When the plate was finally given to Danse, it wasn’t  _ just  _ Instamash. There was bits of Deathclaw meat in it as well, and he was surprised to see  _ gravy _ . Danse looked up at Nick just as he was setting down some wine and water.

“It’s not much, but hopefully it’ll fill you up,” he said, before moving over to his desk. He grabbed some paperwork, bringing it over to the table and sitting down across from Danse. Without hesitation, he dived right into his work, in order to attempt to catch up on what he had missed the night before.

Danse just stared at his food for a long time, his head in his hand. Nick continued to dutifully work, muttering to himself occasionally when something didn’t seem right. About ten minutes into this, Danse finally picked up his fork, and took a small nibble of the meal Nick had made for him. His bites gradually grew larger after that, until he was scarfing it all down, hunger finally besting him. Nick didn’t even glance up, allowing Danse the peace and quiet. He only jumped when Danse coughed on a bite he’d accidentally inhaled.

“Careful there,” the old Synth muttered as the ex-Paladin gulped down water.

Danse didn’t seem to hear him, but after that, he ate more slowly. When he was almost done, Nick couldn’t stop himself from watching him, concerned golden eyes blinking slowly in the sunlit house. Danse realized that Nick was staring on his last bite, and he stopped mid movement to furrow his brow.

“You doing okay?” Nick asked, still blinking slowly as he watched color return to the ex-Paladin's cheeks.

Danse took his last bite, chewing thoughtfully.

“... how do you manage it? How do you do it?”

Nick didn’t have to ask Danse to clarify.

“How do I wake up every day and somehow manage knowing I’m not who I thought I was? I’ll… I’ll be honest with you, Danse. Most days, I don’t. I feel like I lose a little more of myself every morning I wake up and remember I’m not human. But I’m literally a machine. You’re flesh and blood. So I’m hoping it’ll tear you up a little less in the long run, once you come to terms with it.”

The ex-Paladin said nothing. Nick tried again to ask how Danse was doing.

“... I’m… alive, I suppose. Thanks to you.”

“Does your arm hurt? I might have something for it.”

Danse frowned, and picked up his glass of wine. “... it’s… annoying,” he admitted at length. “Painkillers would be nice.”

“I’ve got some Med-X around here,” Nick replied, standing up from the table and heading for the bathroom. Once inside, he rummaged around in the medicine cabinet, and returned shortly after with the medicine. He injected it into Danse’s left shoulder, and the ex-Paladin quietly thanked him. He looked up into Nick’s eyes, deep umber into glowing gold, and they stared at each other for a long moment, before the old bot pulled away. Danse looked back down at his plate, more color creeping into his face.

Nick couldn't help but find it endearing.

“I’m not gonna lie,” the old Synth continued as he sat down, “you scared the shit out of me even  _ before  _ you stumbled to my house last night.”

Danse cringed, rubbing his hand over the gauze around his arm. Nick continued.

“All those days I spent in front of your house… I thought you were  _ dead _ , Danse, before you said anything to me. But I didn’t want to intrude and so I just kept reading, and hoping… we had to drag Kori away because she wouldn’t leave, either.”

“So that’s why she wasn’t there,” Danse muttered, spinning his fork on his empty plate.

“She wanted to be, but she’s only human, Danse. She’s been pouring herself into recruitment for the Minutemen to distract herself from you. She doesn’t hate you, Danse. She wanted to help, she  _ still  _ wants to help. But she’s got a whole world depending on her right now. So… you got stuck with me, I guess. Sorry to disapp--”

“But I wasn’t  _ stuck  _ with you,” Danse insisted. “You could have left at any time, given up on me. But you didn’t. And I could have left, too, but I didn’t. I’m… not sure why. I don’t know why I’m still here.”

Nick set down his pen, and tilted his head to one side.

“... I’m glad you’re still here,” he whispered.

The ex-Paladin’s gaze shot up, dark eyes wide and lips shut tight. Nick only smiled, before looking back down at his work.

“Kori asked me to help you, when she realized she couldn’t stay anymore. Said to me, ‘Nick, you do  _ whatever  _ it takes to keep Danse with us. You don’t barge into his house-- that’ll do more bad than good. But you don’t leave him. Make him know that he’s worth your time.  _ Our  _ time. Do it for us.  _ Anything  _ at all in your power, and if he comes out, you do even more.’ So here we are.”

The seconds ticked by. Then, Danse slammed his hands down on the table.

“How is it,” he blurted out, “that you’re somehow the most human and compassionate out of everyone here?! I-- I don’t understand it! You… you’re...”

His voice quieted.

“... probably one of the best things that ever happened to me.”

Nick remained patient and cool, even if Danse’s words drove him crazy with the desire to hold him in his arms. “A hundred years of finding out who you are and how you fit into the grand scheme of things is humbling. Losing the woman you love, your job, your friends, even before all of that… that, too. We don’t have time to be vicious to each other and to live happily. We only have true time to be selfless and honest. And I’m being honest here, Danse. I’m glad you’re still here. I’m glad you’re here, with me, right now, because you’re part of very little that I have left to call safe and home. You’re a wonderful friend, and you’re the most raw and honest out of all of the others. I respect and appreciate that more than anything.”

Danse looked down to his empty plate again. His cheeks burned, and Nick had to fight a smile at the sight.

“... I’ve wasted my life, then,” Danse muttered, in response to Nick’s statement, and the old bot frowned again.

“It’s never too late to change. Maybe not everyone will appreciate it, and maybe you’ll never have enough time in the world to right all of your wrongs, but it’s never too late to change. And that’s the kindest thing you can do for  _ yourself _ , in the end.”

Danse dropped his head, enough so that Nick couldn’t see his expression. Nick leaned back in his seat, and looked away, feeling suddenly sick. Maybe he was misreading the signs. Maybe Danse was uncomfortable and he was just being polite.

“... I’m sorry Kori isn’t here,” he muttered. “I know that I’m not what you want. I know I’ll  _ never  _ be what you want. I’m just some cranky old robot, I know this. I just… I just hope the things I have to say mean something to you. So long as I’m not speaking to the void here, the time I spend helping you is all worth it.”

After a minute or so of contemplation, Danse lifted his head, wiping at teary eyes and sniffling.

“... I like you, Nick. I do. And I’m terrible at showing it right now, so I’ll just have to say it in words. Something in me… has been changing, ever since that first day you started talking to me through my door. I don’t know what it is for sure, but all I know is that… I’m a little less angry with the world. I’m still lacking in any emotion other than grief, but the skies have color again, and I know it’s a start towards being better.”

Danse looked up and out of the window.

“I’m still here, because of you, when Kori couldn’t be. I’m… I’m okay, because of you. I don’t know whether I’m grateful or upset about that yet, given what I am, but I'm processing it.”

Nick nodded thoughtfully.

“Okay. That’s okay. It’s… something.”  The old Synth stood slowly from the table, but stopped before moving away.  “So… you love Kori, then.”

“I do.” Danse shut his eyes, sighing in resignation at the fact. “I’ve tried to deny it for too long. It’s something I can’t deny anymore, though. It’s… it’s killing me inside.”

“She told me about your… arrangement… and I had assumed so upon seeing the way you regarded her, but my suspicions weren’t confirmed until last night. It’s tricky business, developing feelings in a friends with benefits relationship.”

Again, Danse nodded, face pale. “I shouldn’t,” he choked out at length. “I’m… I’m a machine. It’s not right. It’s selfish and wrong of me to want her the way that I do. She should find some human to settle down with. I’m… I’m just a clone.”

Nick’s expression was soft and sad, and he walked around the table to stand next to Danse.

“Maybe physically you are. But you’re somebody new, in mind. Somebody she’s clearly attracted to, in her own way. You'd be surprised at what she doesn't care about in other people.”

“It’s physical attraction alone,” Danse sighed, standing up from the table and walking past Nick. “She doesn’t feel the same way that I do about her. She cares for me deeply as her friend, and I am grateful for that, but… there’s no romantic attraction. Not for her, anyways.”

Nick followed Danse to the couch, taking a seat in the arm chair in the opposite corner as Danse plopped down bonelessly. The old Synth wanted nothing more than to be next to him and to comfort him, but Nick kept his distance, instead letting his hand move back to fiddle with the mirror behind the chair blindly.

“If possible, I want things to remain positive between us, before I leave the Commonwealth. I’ve decided to remain until the Institute is destroyed, but past that point, I have no reason to stay.”

“All these friends you’ve made don’t carry enough weight, huh?”

“They’re Kori’s friends, not mine. And I don’t want to be a burden in Kori’s life. It would be better for everyone if I parted ways peacefully.”

“You don’t have to leave the Commonwealth for that,” Nick said, in an attempt to convince him to stay. Because he enjoyed Danse’s company, when he wasn’t talking about killing his friends and good people. Danse deserved someplace safe. Danse deserved someone who could take care of him. And after all this time, that was what Nick wanted to be. But instead of expressing his true feelings, he instead offered, “If you wanted, you could stay with me.”

At that, Danse looked up and over at Nick.

“My assistant, Ellie, she’s human,” the android explained. “One of these days, she’s going to get old, and either retire, or die. If you wanted to fill that role, I’d be more than happy to have you. And you wouldn’t have to face your feelings about Kori… though I don’t exactly think that’s healthy. I think it’s the best alternative, though, if you’re really against talking to her. I'd be more than happy to help you.”

“I can’t tell her. Like I said, she deserves a human lover, and I don’t think my feelings are reciprocated.”

“Well, in my humble opinion, Danse, if you really love her, you wouldn’t leave.”

The ex-Paladin stiffened.

“She values your friendship so damn much. You’d be surprised how much she talks about you when she’s with me. And whether she’s in love with you or not, it’d break her heart if you were to leave, after everything the two of you have been through. When you love someone, you make sure not to do things that would hurt them. Right?”

“... right.” Danse bit his lip.

“So you don’t have to tell her, then,” Nick reiterated, “but don’t go, if you can help it. There’s an awful lot of people who would miss you, even if you don’t believe it. My doors are always open to you, Danse.”

Danse shook his head, and placed his head in his hands. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it. Right now, I’m just… exhausted. I think I’d like to get some rest.”

“You can use my bedroom,” Nick responded quickly. “I don’t really sleep, anyways, and I'd rather you weren't alone for a little while. If you need anything, I’ll be right out here.”

He watched as Danse stood, and dragged himself down the hall towards the bedroom. Nick sighed once Danse was out of hearing range, running his left hand down his face.

He hated to see Danse like this. He wanted that old, confident BOS soldier back, the one he’d initially been attracted to since he first saw him. Maybe minus the racism, but this Danse made him concerned and upset. More than anything, he hated how Danse hated himself for no good reason. He wanted to make him whole again. Nick wanted to make Danse whole.

The old Synth stood, shaking his head. Some work would help distract him from this stupid, pointless crush. He moved back to his desk, and stared down blankly at the pages of his work for hours. His tumultuous thoughts only drifted back to those deep umber eyes, and that empty hole he knew he could help to fill, if only Danse would let him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, so just a heads up for the next chapter, y'all, I know some of you probably aren't all about that Nick/Danse life but can tolerate the romance half, so do know that the next chapter is Nick/Danse _smut_. You _may_ skip it if need be; I don't believe you'll miss out on too much information by doing so with this one!


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. I think, after all this time, I owe you guys an explanation on something.
> 
> **_Why Danse/Nick? Why include this in Order and Maintenance at all? What's the point?_ **
> 
> It's a bit of a lengthy story, but I'll try to make it brief. I bought Fallout 4 and didn't play it regularly for a long time. At the time, I was in a relationship, and a few months later, my SO bought the game as well. I didn't really know who Paladin Danse was, but I knew Nick for sure. Well, they started shipping Danse/Nick, and the more I played the game and understood their backstories at their insistence, the more I understood. We started a Nick/Danse/SS RP together, and I started falling for the ship more and more as we developed that RP together...
> 
> And then we broke up, just when that RP was getting where I wanted it to go. And I had no one left who I knew was actively into Fallout anymore.
> 
> I started writing _Order and Maintenance_ while we were still together, because there were certain scenarios I wanted to see Danse in that we would have taken too long to get to in our RPs. Kori was actually initially a Sims 4 character made solely for the purpose of having Death's baby, but that's another story. I started writing _Order and Maintenance_ solely as a smut fic with Kori and Danse, but when the break-up happened... that Nick/Danse/SS RP was never finished, and it left a void that desperately needed filling. And I didn't know anyone from the fandom at that time, and I was very alone. 
> 
> _Order and Maintenance_ became a coping mechanism, after that. Nick/Danse became a coping mechanism.
> 
> So in the same way that that ship and writing _Order and Maintenance_ helped me come to terms with the reality of my situation, Nick evolved into this role to help Danse come to terms with his. They have a fantastic dynamic and contrast to each other, and I wanted to reflect that in a way that helped fill the space that had been left behind in my own life.
> 
> That is why Nick/Danse has been included in Order and Maintenance. It's a little deeper than just "Oh, I ship them and I think it'd be nice to see it!" so I apologize if it's not to your liking. It was for my own mental state that I did this. That I let Nick and Danse finally find the happy ending they never got in that RP from all those months ago.
> 
> Regardless, if you choose to keep reading despite this ship, I thank you immensely. Whether it's because you understand, or you just like Kori and Danse that much, or you actually like Nick/Danse, I thank you for sticking with me through this.
> 
> ... Let's get into some mirror kink shall we? XD

When Nick went to Danse's house to pick up some of his things for the ex-Paladin while he was resting in his home, the last thing he anticipated to find in his old worn and torn BOS uniform was a holotape. All Nick had intended was to pick up some clothes and other personal effects, but as he rummaged through his clothing drawers, the orange tape had simply flipped out of the dresser as a result of the clothes being moved around. Carefully, Nick picked up the tape, and knowing that he, as a Gen-2, had the capacity to play it on his own, plugged it into a slot at his side. Of course the voice that greeted him for his efforts was Danse's, but the words the man spoke would have made Nick's blood run cold, if he had still had any.

" _As the minutes tick by and I stare at the walls of this godforsaken place, I'm still trying to cope with the reality that I am a living lie._ _My identity as Paladin Danse is nothing but a memory now. Everything I held dear, everything I've ever believed in is completely gone. I've spent far too long wondering why this happened to me, but the truth is, it doesn't matter. I am a synth... which means I am freak of nature, a perversion of science and an example of where mankind has gone wrong. For the benefit of humanity, I need to die. Not because I'm cowardly or despondent, but because it's the human thing to do. This is Danse, former Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel, signing off._ "

It was brief. It was horrifying, in its own way. And Nick tossed down the tape and swore to himself as he stormed out of his house, that no more would he wait. No more would he hold himself back from the ex-Paladin. He was going to do something about this, regardless of his own self-doubt.

Danse needed someone. He was going to  _be_ that someone.

It was almost two in the morning when Nick heard a shout from his bedroom as he re-entered the house. He rushed quickly to the doorframe, worried sick that Danse had hurt himself again. Upon reaching the doorframe, he stopped there with a sympathetic sound at the sight that greeted him. Danse was upright, shaking wildly and clutching at various parts of himself, namely his chest and his left arm and his hands. His whimpers were near silent, and his wide eyes were unseeing as he panted. Nick stood in the doorway, silent, as he waited for Danse to come back to himself, uncertain if the man would appreciate physical contact. It could make his panic worse, and Nick wasn’t going to contribute to that. As much as he only wanted to take a hold of Danse and rock him like a small child, lull him back to sleep with a song, he remained still, and waited.

When the ex-Paladin looked over at Nick, finally, he offered a gentle smile.

“Wanna come sit out in the living room with me?” he offered, not yet pressing about Danse’s nightmare, or how he was feeling. It seemed the most reasonable thing to offer, given that Danse was averse to most physical contact as of late.

Danse gulped, before nodding wordlessly. He stumbled out of the bed and followed closely behind Nick as they walked down the hall and back into the main room of the house. Nick lit himself a cigarette as he sat down at his desk in the corner of the room, and Danse sat at the couch. He curled in on himself, hands close to his chest, and he regarded every inch of the room with caution, as if anything could be a threat to him.

They sat in silence, for a long time-- Nick, nose deep in his work, and Danse slowly regaining his senses and his calm. Once the ex-Paladin’s shaking had stopped, Nick set down his pen. Even though he didn’t have a physical heart, it still ached, somehow. He regarded Danse across the room for a long, quiet moment, before whispering to him.

“You wanna talk about it?”

Danse shook his head.  “Just more of the same,” he muttered, rubbing his bandaged arm.

The Synth furrowed his brow. “Same of what?”

“Seeing myself for what I really am. A machine. A clone. A disgrace to humanity.”

Nick sighed. Of course, of course. He should have assumed. “You’re _not_ any of those things, Danse,” he reminded him firmly.

“Don’t try to lie to me to make me feel better.”

“I’m _not_.”

Danse grunted, and stared down at his left arm. The tension was palpable in his shoulders, thick on Nick’s tongue. He could hardly stand to see Danse like this, so vulnerable and hateful of himself. All he wanted was for Danse to relax, to believe that regardless of what he was, that there was good in himself. Nick stared down at his pages, trying to think of all the things that made Danse feel good about himself. Things that he could use to get the man to see that he was closer to human than he thought. The time for inaction was over. He had to think of something,  _anything_.

A few minutes later, when he was thinking about his Brotherhood past, and the relationship he and Kori currently held, it hit him. And idea that would scratch itches the both of them had, that neither of them would address. Nick's desire to hold and comfort Danse... and Danse's inherent need to follow orders. 

Yes. It was unorthodox, but it could work.

The Synth blew out a plume of smoke from chapped plastic lips, golden eyes gleaming from the dark corner of the room. He loosened his tie as he regarded Danse across the way, before standing and coming to settle in front of his desk.

“I think I’ve got an idea. And I want to help you. And I’ve heard that you’re  _ very  _ good at following orders when you want to, Danse.”

The ex-Paladin furrowed his brow, wary of where Nick was going with this as he looked up from his arm. “It’d be a poor use of your time.”

“There’s never really been a good use of time in the wee hours of the morning like this, save for sleeping, or exploits more… intimate.”  Nick placed his cigarette back in his mouth, elbows on his knees. "I just want you to know... I only want to help. But if you're not a fan of what I have to propose, you have every right to say no."

The old Synth took a deep, steadying breath. Or, at least, made the motion of taking one.

“If you’ll let me… I want to touch you. I want to make you feel good, Danse. After all this time you’ve spent alone… you deserve to have something nice. To feel a little pleasure. After all this time, you deserve to have someone take care of you. To give you security. Safety. Something familiar.”

Danse’s eyes widened, and he looked away from Nick with a blush.

“... you want to…” he couldn’t even finish his own statement. But he wasn’t immediately saying no, and that wound Nick up with energy. He didn’t say no. Instead, he asked, “Why?”

“Only if you’ll let me. Only if you  _ want  _ to. And because, if you listen to me and do as I say, you’ll feel a lot better physically and mentally. I know I’m being vague and brief, and I’m sorry, but if you’ll trust me…”

Danse inhaled deeply, then exhaled. Kori wasn’t here, and their relationship was open, regardless. They weren’t serious. They likely never would be. And Nick was so… fascinating, and kind. Patient. It was all attractive to Danse, even if it had taken him this long to admit it to himself. And as much as he pushed it away, he yearned deeply for physical contact of any sort.

But at the same time… Nick was robotic. The very thing he had been trained his whole life to hunt and destroy. To feel Nick’s hands on him in such a sensitive, sensual way… Mostly, it frightened him. But a deeper part of him he refused to acknowledge found the idea…  _ tantalizing _ .

“What about Jennifer?” he asked.

Nick blinked. “So you  _ did  _ hear me talk about that.” He ran a hand down his face. “Jennifer Lands has been dead for over two hundred years. I got over that fact almost a hundred years ago. She’s not related to the here and now anymore.”

Danse bit his lip, and looked down at his hands clasped in his lap as he finally answered Nick’s question from before. His voice was distant and tiny

“Okay. I… I want to try.”

Nick leaned back, seemingly satisfied with that answer, and his face was once again cast in shadow. “Safeword, or traffic light system?”

“Traffic light.”

Nick’s responding chuckle to the hoarseness of Danse’s voice was nothing but kind and reassuring. The Synth stamped out what remained of his light, and gestured to Danse with a hand. “Come on then, doll. Why don’t you strip down for me? Show off a little for me.”

Danse felt himself shying away under Nick’s intense stare. He wanted to flee from the room, rush back to his own house and hide himself from the world again. He didn’t  _ want  _ to have to stand around with the idea that he was completely vulnerable and naked, even if he didn’t have to look at himself. Just the very  _ thought  _ of showing off that much of his imposter, traitorous body made his hands shake. He stood slowly, but he only stood and nothing more, stock still, arms unmoving,  _ refusing  _ to cooperate.

Nick saw this, and frowned as he stood up, slowly. Danse cringed even at that predictable movement, but he didn’t back away when the older Synth approached.

“Do you want me to help get you started?” Nick mumbled, and from the distance between them, the low baritones of his voice reverberated through the air. He looked up at Danse, trying to look up through lashes he didn’t have in a feeble attempt at a demure facsimile.

Danse stared down at the Synth, and clenched his fists as he nodded, lips sealed tightly shut.

“Okay then” Nick mumbled again, “let’s start with that shirt.”

One metal and one pseudo-flesh hand moved upwards starting to touch at Danse’s hip and sliding under the fabric of his shirt. The cool metal, once it made contact with his touch-starved skin, made Danse flinch away, and he took a startled step back.

“Yellow,” he hissed out, holding his side where that metal hand had touched. “Yellow, yellow.”

Nick backed away, holding up his hands and attempting to appear non-threatening. If he had his own heart, it would be pounding with nerves, startled at having frightened Danse. “Yellow. Okay. No worries. Deep breaths, Danse. How about you have a seat while I find a glove…”

The ex-Paladin nodded shakily, sitting down achingly slowly on the couch as Nick moved around the room. A minute or two later, he made a small “ahah!” sound, and was soon sliding on a leather glove over his exposed right hand. Even just the sight of the action made Danse feel more at ease, and it was easier for him to stand this time around when Nick returned to his position in front of Danse.

“All green?” Nick asked, wiggling his fingers, both synthetic and gloved.

Danse nodded again, slow as it may have been. He wasn’t sure where Nick was going with this, or why he thought this was something that could help Danse with his self-esteem. “Let’s… give it another try.”

So Nick once again slipped his hands under Danse’s shirt. The leather was still unnerving, but less startling and triggering than the bare metal hand had been. Danse watched as Nick’s hands continued to pull the fabric up, up, up, until he was lifting his own arms of his own accord to aid in the removal, and Nick hummed his approval.

“There you go,” he praised, and Danse could feel his heart shaking out its wings after so much disuse. The shirt was over and off of his head the next moment, and then Danse had to avert his gaze from himself, throat tight, but Nick continued to congratulate him anyways. “There you go. See? That wasn’t so hard. Now…”

He leaned in to Danse’s ear, nearly on tip-toes in order to do so. “Now… do you think you can be a good boy and listen to orders?”

The combination of words being spoken by that voice was like a punch to the gut, and he couldn’t stop the shiver that rolled through him even if he tried. The chuckle Nick gave him afterwards only added insult to pleasurable injury.

The Synth backed away from Danse, moving to sit on the edge of his desk in the dimly lit corner of the room, and rested his head in his hand. Somehow, even as a machine, Nick seemed to be scouring over Danse hungrily, even though only his chest was currently exposed. “Now… why don’t you play with those nice tits, hmm?”

The ex-Paladin bit his lip, and did as requested, even if he couldn’t stand to look at himself. His hands trembled as they quested uncertainly over hot skin, and when he took one nipple and rolled it between his fingers, he had to swallow down a groan at the pleasure that wracked his understimulated body. Nick seemed to sense this, and shook his head.

“No, come on. Make some noise, Danse. One of the first things that drew me to you was your voice, after all. You’ve got that same rumble I do, when you want to. It’s hot as hell.”

Danse had to closed his eyes, and he tilted his head back to bite back a whine. He wasn’t allowed to feel this way. He was an abomination of nature; he shouldn’t even exist. Why would he allow himself to feel pleasure? Something he clearly didn’t deserve? And even if any of that was false, even if it was alright for him to feel this way… it was just  _ humiliating _ .

“Come on… good boys follow orders, right?”

“Mmph…” Danse bit his lip and tasted copper.

Nick leaned forwards. “Well, I’m  _ ordering  _ you to let your noises go. You’re a good boy, aren’t you? Don’t want to be good for me?”

Finally, a reluctant groan slid from Danse’s throat, both hands now playing with his nipples. He could hear the smile in Nick’s voice.

“That’s it… good. I knew you had it in you. And you’ve got such a pretty flush going on, too. All the way down your chest… it’s impressive and arousing in so many ways. You don’t know how good you look--”

Nick paused mid statement.

“... but what if you did?”

Danse cracked open an eye just in time to watch Nick push himself off of the desk. The old Synth walked slowly past Danse, and he watched as he took a mirror that was stuffed behind the armchair, and brought it out. Now, Danse could see that it was a full body-length mirror, and he averted his gaze once his own body came into view. A moment later, Nick was behind him, slowly and carefully snaking his arms around Danse’s waist.

“Come on now,” he chided gently. “Don’t be like that. You had no problem with yourself before you knew the truth about yourself. If you think about it… nothing’s changed.”

“I’m a  _ freak _ ,” Danse spat, eyes shut tight as he tilted his head down and away from the mirror. “I shouldn’t exist. Looking at myself is like spitting in my own face. It’s like the Institute is right  _ there _ , laughing at me.”

The old Synth sighed. A fragile leather hand trailed up Danse’s side, up to his face, and cupped his jaw, butterfly light. “Do you remember the first time we met, and the walk home? When you still hated me? Do you remember what we talked about?”

Danse’s breathing had picked up. “What, about how Synths are abominations and an insult to the uniqueness of humankind?”

“ _ And _ about how Gen-3 Synths are no less human than someone born from the womb? Come on, Danse. I know you’re a smart man. Think about this for a second.”

The ex-Paladin shook his head minutely. “I-- it’s not the same. I’m not the same.”

Nick sighed, and leaned in closer, until he was talking right against the shell of Danse’s ear. He walked the man closer to the mirror. “Danse… please open your eyes. Just… for now, I just want you to look at your face. That’s all. Can you do that for me?”

There was a brief moment where time seemed to stop. Then, after a reluctant sigh, Danse did as he was requested, and then his breathing stopped again.

Before him was, of course, his own reflection, but… this wasn’t any reflection Danse recognized. His hair had grown out considerably, and the clean, slick hair he had once taken great pride in was all askew on his head, some strands brushing down over his eyelashes. There were great dark circles under his eyes, deep bags that he hadn’t seen since Cutler’s death, and his eyes just looked so… tired, and worn. Hollow cheeks glared at Danse, gaunt and thin, but some of it was negated by the beard he’d begun to grow out, in his neglect to shave regularly the way he used to.

Just over his shoulder, he could see Nick, resting his chin against Danse’s back and gloved hand overly cautious in touching his skin.

“I just want you to take a moment to look at yourself. Your hair’s grown out… there’s hunger and weariness in your eyes and cheeks… you’re exhausted. You’re  _ tired _ . You’re  _ hungry _ . You’re  _ sad _ , you’re  _ upset _ , you  _ feel betrayed _ . And those aren’t pleasant emotions, but… they  _ are  _ emotions. You weren’t  _ trained  _ or  _ programmed  _ to feel those things, Danse. That comes naturally to you, because laboratory made or not… you are still, down to your very core,  _ human _ .”

Danse’s lower lip trembled.

“If I were to take a knife and cut you open, from chest to navel, you’d see organs there. In your arm, well, as you’ve seen first hand…”

Danse blushed a little, his right hand coming to rest over the self-inflicted wound still covered by gauze.

“You have tendons, blood, bone. What kind of machine needs to bleed, or eat? What kind of machine feels pain, for what purpose? A truly effective machine wouldn’t feel any of these things, but a perfectly normal human would.”

Danse’s voice cracked. “Regardless, I was still-- I am a mass produced--”

“Humans are mass produced. It’s called having sex. And maybe it takes them a little longer to grow up, and maybe they have a quicker expiration date, but there’s a point in their lives where they’re just like you, and you’re just like them.”

Those gloved fingers traced around Danse’s face, and all he could do was watch with shaking breath and lips. 

“Danse… really, the only machine thing about you is a little stupid chip in your head that doesn’t even define who you are, and it’s not even really a  _ part  _ of you. It was just put there. You have someone else’s memories, sure, but that’s the past. From the moment you took your first breath, to when you escaped the Institute, finding Cutler, joining the Brotherhood, letting Kori in to your life… all of that has been  _ you _ . Not the human you used to be. This has  _ all  _ been you,  _ this  _ Danse, standing here, right now. You’ve  _ made  _ yourself human, and you’ve made  _ yourself _ . Maybe this isn’t the path the old Danse would have taken, but that’s okay, because that is what makes you uniquely  _ you _ .  _ This  _ is what makes you human. Your origins don’t matter-- it’s what you’ve done with the life given to you that really defines who you are.”

Danse couldn’t take it anymore. He bit his lip to hold back tears as his right hand shot up to take a hold of Nick’s. Not removing. Not breaking. Just holding.

“This… this doesn’t change the fact that I’m an imposter,” he murmured.

Nick shook his head. “No, Danse. An imposter tries to pretend they’re someone they’re not. You’ve never been pretending. You  _ thought  _ you were the human Danse, but when you found out you weren’t, you never lied to anyone else, or to yourself. You’re no imposter. You’re just scared, and hurt. You feel lied to.”

Shakily, the ex-Paladin nodded.

“And it’s  _ that  _ that proves my point. You are  _ feeling _ . You feel pain. You feel regret. You  _ feel  _ these things, and all the Synths before your generation, barring me, don’t have that. They don’t have your flesh and bones. They don’t have your heart. The way you’re made doesn’t matter… if you feel, that’s something uniquely lifelike, and the level in which you do it… that’s human. Not animal, nor programmed machine.  _ Human _ .”

Danse dragged Nick’s hand up his face, to cup his cheek, and he leaned into it with a weak flutter of his eyes as the first few tears slipped past. The arm that was still around his waist pulled him close back against Nick again, the weight of the body behind him a comfort, regardless of its makeup.

“You’re okay, Danse. You’re alive. That’s gotta count for something good.”

Danse nodded again. There was less shaking this time. When Nick kissed behind his ear, a pleasurable shudder ran through him.

“Okay. Here’s what we’re going to do now. We’re gonna back away from the mirror, so you can see all of you, and you’re going to be good and do exactly as I tell you. Okay?”

The thought made him tremble all over again, but he nodded regardless to Nick’s command. The Synth placed both of his hands on Danse’s hips, and walked them backwards.

Now, Danse could see the rest of his body. Vaguely, yes, he was disgusted with the sight of a body he knew was once someone else’s exact same one, but for the most part… he was just nervous at how thin he was. His muscles were still defined, but his ribs and the jut of the bones in his hips were also still unnervingly present. There was an ugly bruise in his right side where Hancock had punched him all those weeks ago, along with several other places scattered over his torso.

Nick’s comment of, “Beautiful,” was jarring enough that he physically jolted out of his thoughts, eyes blinking rapidly as a few more tears spilled down his cheeks. The android hushed him and soothed him, hands still playing with his hip bones. “See? Your body’s changed. Can any machine do that the same way you can?”

Hesitantly, the ex-Paladin shook his head.

“Yeah. That’s right.” Nick’s hands quested up Danse’s body, until they were at his nipples, and then he was pinching and tugging the same way Danse had been a few minutes ago. Danse grunted at the stimulation, arching forwards out of his own accord into the pleasure, and his nearly soft cock started to take interest again. “Open your eyes, Danse. Look at yourself.”

He wasn’t even aware that he had closed them. It was a struggle to do so, but Danse looked into his own teary eyes, and then down at the hands splayed across his chest, at the fingers skillfully plucking him apart. He kept his lips firmly shut, but a light blush was beginning to spread across his cheeks. The sight of watching his own face turn redder only made the process quicker. His hands trembled as they came to clutch at Nick’s wrists.

“That feels good, right? You like it when I play with your tits, Danse?”

Nick wasn’t satisfied with a nod. He tutted, and shook his head when he received exactly that in response. “Come on, I know you’ve got a voice in there. I want to hear you say it for me.”

“Yes,” Danse muttered. His voice sounded sticky in his own ears. He cried out softly when one of his sensitive buds were tugged on just the other side of painful.

“Louder. Be proud of it, the pleasure you’re feeling; this is unique about you, too.”

“Yes,” Danse said, just under room-volume voice. He was still staring at Nick’s hands on his chest, and he bit his lip and whined when the other nipple received the same treatment as the other.

“Yes, what? Yes you’ve got a voice? Yes you like when I abuse your poor nipples?”

“I--” Danse swallowed thickly. “Yes, I-- I like it when you touch me like this.”

Nick hummed his approval, kissing Danse’s shoulder. “And there it is. There’s another uniquely human thing; you feel  _ pleasure _ .”

Danse was almost panting now, and with each pleasurable tug, he was beginning to minutely grind back against Nick, even though there was nothing there. He was just imagining the bulge there, his touch-starved brain and over-active imagination toying with his sense of reality slightly.

“You shouldn’t be ashamed of it,” he continued, and his gloved right hand started moving down the expanse of Danse’s body again. “If anything, it’s one of the things you should be most proud of. After all, it feels good, right? If there’s  _ anything  _ that proves you’re not a freak of nature if my words didn’t convince you, it’s  _ got _ to be  _ this _ .”

Nick’s hand came to cup Danse’s confined, half-hard cock, and the fragile, shaking buck into his hand was everything Nick had ever wanted to reduce the uptight man to. He got in close to Danse’s ear again, pleased to find that when he looked in the mirror, Danse was completely entranced by the hand at his groin. His pupils were blown wide, and even if his mouth was still shut tight, he could hear him panting from his nose.

“You’re holding back,” Nick chided him, and one of his own unique features, that tongue of his, came and licked behind the shell of Danse’s ear.

“Aah…”

“Why? It’s just you and me, and it feels good, right?”

Danse hiccupped on a small sob. “Y-Yes…”

“I want to hear you, Danse. And I want  _ you  _ to hear you. Come on… make some noise for me, doll. Be good for me…”

That was the trick. Those words, combined with a firm grind of his palm on Danse’s cock, caused the ex-Paladin to moan with abandon, his head rolling back on Nick’s shoulder and a stuttery thrust of his hips. Tension flooded out of his body in a wave so thick, Nick could almost physically feel it wash over him.

“Yeah, that’s it,” Nick whispered, and he began to undo the button of Danse’s pants. “So good for me, doll… just like that. Let me take care of you, just relax. Let’s get these off of you…”

He slid down the zipper, and when he started pushing his pants down, Danse suddenly snapped back to reality, and clumsily aided Nick in removing the article of clothing completely. His gaze had re-averted from the mirror, however, and his face was completely red now. That just wouldn’t do. Again, Nick tutted his disapproval, and nibbled on Danse’s ear.

“Why are you so shy now? This is one of the most beautiful parts of you…”

He took a hold of Danse’s conflicted cock, stroking slow but firm. Danse moaned at the pleasurable touch, but kept his eyes firmly shut, continued to hide in the crook of Nick’s neck even as he widened his stance.

“And the way we touch each other… Nothing more human than this, this kind of intimacy.”

“ _ F-Fuck. _ ” Danse finally swore, when a gloved thumb dipped into the slit of his leaking length and wiggled back and forth ever so slightly. His thighs trembled under the onslaught of feeling, one hand still plucking at his nipples, the other wrapped snuggly around his too-long neglected dick.

“Yeah,” Nick growled, and a glob of pre-cum seeped out around his thumb as he pulled away and continued to stroke Danse. “You sound so  _ wrecked, _ and I’ve only just barely started touching you. That’s a damn good sound, right there. You sound  _ divine _ .”

Danse choked back a sob, thrusting his hips into Nick’s hand. He whimpered when the old Synth pulled away, and watched with confused eyes as his upper back was pushed forwards, his arms clutching onto the sides of the mirror of his own accord. Then, Nick was firmly against him again, chin on his shoulder as his hand returned to his cock.

“Look at yourself, in the mirror. Look at your face while I’m touching you.”

And Danse did as he was commanded. He looked into his own eyes, the umber brown a mere halo under the void of his pupils, and the red of his cheeks and face. His lips were more swollen than he would have thought of them to be naturally capable of, and he thought back to all of the times Kori must have seen him this way, flushed and sweating and desperate.

He looked  _ good _ . Desireable. Danse bit his lip, and looked down at Nick’s hand stroking him so firmly, so intimately, too aroused by his own reflection.

“Do you see what Kori and I see in you now?” Nick asked, lips caressing his skin just so  _ perfectly _ .

All Danse could do was whine, gaze flickering from his cock to his face in the mirror. He was dripping all over Nick’s hand, and every part of his nervous system was alight and sensitive, but he was still so far from cumming.

“You look so fucking good,” Nick growled again, and the rumble of it made Danse sputter with need. “And you’re such a good boy, aren’t you? You’re so good at listening, at following orders. And good boys get rewarded…”

The ex-Paladin perked up. Reward? What kind of reward?

He knew, a moment later, after Nick had withdrawn his hands, and then he heard the tell-tale flick of a cap of lube being thrown off. He looked over his shoulder and watched as Nick slicked up his left hand, clearly not wanting to ruin the glove.

“Touch yourself for me, doll,” Nick commanded, and Danse was helpless to deny him, with how wound up he felt at both the previous stimulation and the new knowledge that Nick was going to fill him up with his fingers. He tore his left hand away from the mirror, shooting down between his legs and jerking himself off a touch hastily.

“Just put them in,” he gasped as he twisted his wrist around his own needy cock and stared at his spit-sticky lips as he spoke. “I want-- I want the cold, the pain, I don’t mind.”

Nick offered an understanding chuckle, and did just that, pressing in one finger to the bottom knuckle immediately. Danse hardly flinched, even with how long it had been since he had received any attention down there. His hand simply continued to stroke his cock, pulling the foreskin tight over the head before pulling it back firmly, voice nothing but ragged pants as he watched himself.

“So good for me,” Nick praised him again, and a part of Danse knew that Nick was laying this all on thick, but another part of him understood that this was what he needed. His arousal certainly wasn’t complaining. The android was already slipping a second finger into Danse, and his back arched like a bow, breath leaving him in a shuddering cry.

“God, those  _ noises _ ,” Nick groaned, and for the first time since they’d started, Danse realized that Nick was getting turned on by all of this. It was obvious by the strain in his voice and the crackle of static that he was getting something out of this. Whether he could physically act on those reactions was another unknown matter entirely as far as Danse knew, and frankly, unnecessary to think about at the current moment. Nick continued to speak, after taking a moment to collect himself.

“God… one of these times… I want to have you on a bed. Wanna lay you down and eat out that tight ass of yours and fuck you senseless. I want to hear you moan and whimper just like this, for  _ me _ . So beautiful, so  _ fucking perfect _ . So good, Danse…”

Danse choked out a sob of pleasure at the thought. Nick wanted to do this more. Nick wanted to fuck him more. Nick thought he was still attractive (perfect! He had said perfect!) after all this time. And then there was the thought of the way he had treated Nick so poorly, and yet, after all this time, he was still here. Nick was still here, behind him now, talking him through this so _perfectly, confidently_ , reducing him to a puddle and enjoying every second of it. And as Nick continued to touch him, his mind suddenly was torn from the moment as he considered everyone else.

Kori… damn it all, he knew she felt the same. _Knew_ that she didn't care what he was, only that they could be friends. Hancock only harbored a grudge against his Brotherhood past, the same with Deacon. Curie was only concerned about fixing his arm. Everyone only had their different feelings about him because of his  _ actions _ . Not because of who or what he was.

No one cared that he was a Synth. No one that mattered, at least. 

It finally clicked.

“N-Nick!” he gasped out, that realization unlocking something in him and allowing him to finally draw close to release. His climax snuck up quick, too quick, and he was grasping the base of his cock hard to keep from cumming too soon. He saw himself, in his reflection, and his shoulders crawled with burning need at the sight of himself so undone.

But the old Synth, upon hearing his name in that way, shuddered, crooking his fingers more forcefully against Danse’s prostate and making him yell with pleasure. “You’ve done so good for me, Danse. It’s okay; you can let go. You can cum, doll.”

Danse growled, and released the base of his cock. He stroked himself harder, faster, all while thrusting himself back on Nick’s fingers. He chanted the Synth’s name under his breath, a mantra of “Nick, Nick, oh God, Nick,” which soon devolved into, “oh fuck,  _ fuck _ , I’m gonna cum,  _ I’m--! _ ”

And Danse’s vision flashed white, and every inch of his body began to sing. His heart pounded against his ribcage, wanting to fly out and away, and he was vaguely aware of someone yelling. His hips jittered with every aftershock, thrusting into his own hand, and the one thing he heard clearly through it all was the splatter of his cum against the mirror, and Nick behind him crooning softly in approval, his free hand running up and down Danse’s back.

“There you go… that’s it, you did so good for me… good boy…”

The ex-Paladin shivered, beginning to sag as he came down from his high, but Nick wrapped a hand around his waist as he pulled out his fingers, murmuring soft praise and pulling him back and away from the mirror.

“Come on,” he urged Danse quietly, “let’s get you cleaned up.”

Bonelessly, Danse nodded, eyes barely seeing even though they were open. The only thing that was a certainty was the Synth guiding him towards the bedroom, holding him close and kissing all along his shoulder and in the crook of his neck. Danse didn’t fully come back to himself until he felt a warm, wet cloth running over his stomach and his still sensitive dick. It caused him to jolt a little, to which the pressure lightened, and Nick, who was hovering above him, gave a sheepish, apologetic smile.

“Sorry,” he muttered, and took the hand Danse had used to touch himself and wiped that clean, too.

When he was about to stand, Danse stopped him, a hand shooting out to grab the android’s wrist. His words caught in his throat, for a moment, but he managed to speak his mind a moment later.

“Stay?” he croaked out, searching Nick’s eyes for any kind of emotion.

Sure enough, the look in his eyes softened. Nick smiled reassuringly, and rubbed Danse’s side comfortingly. “I really oughta get that mirror cleaned up and put away, but after that, I’ll come back. Just make yourself comfortable, alright? There’s water there on the night stand.”

Reluctantly, Danse let Nick go. He took a hold of the glass as the old Synth left the room, taking a slow, shaking sip. He had to hurry to place the glass back where it belonged as his strength left him, the realization of not what he had done, but  _ who  _ he had done it with finally crashing down on him. He looked down at his hands, shaking, but it didn’t last.

He looked down at his hands, and felt no shame. He looked down at his hands, and felt…  _ normal _ .

Danse jumped, startled when Nick walked back into the room. The old Synth stopped short. “Are you okay?”

Danse lowered his hands, slowly, as he stared at Nick. There was something in the android's face that he couldn’t quite read, but some part of him knew exactly what it was. His heart jolted in realization, and he felt sick.

This wasn't just sex for Nick. This was...

“Do you… I-- I want to return the favor,” Danse found himself blurting out.

Nick recoiled out of shock, and Danse was sure that if the old bot could blush, he would be doing it currently.

“That’s… that’s not necessary,” Nick mumbled, coming to sit on the bed next to Danse. He reached out to encourage him to lay down, but the ex-Paladin took a hold of his hand, hesitantly kissing his fingertips. Now Danse was  _ sure  _ Nick was blushing; his golden eyes were brighter, and something in the old bot was humming, like a cooling fan.

“You helped me more than you know,” Danse insisted.

“Yeah… but I think I’m starting to get the picture now.”

“Just tell me what to do,” Danse asked, looking up at Nick.

Nick sighed, and gently pushed Danse’s hand away, much to the ex-Paladin’s disappointment. “Just… trust me, alright? Not tonight. I only want you to do this if you’re  _ sure  _ we’re not gonna be a one-time thing.”

And there it was. The old Synth was bearing out his heart for the other man to do what he wanted with. Danse blinked over at Nick, and was silent for a long time. Longer than Nick would have liked. Danse took a more firm hold of Nick’s hand in his own.

“... I… do think some time to think about it all would be a good idea,” he admitted at length, “but I do want you to know that… somehow, despite everything, I…  _ do  _ harbor strong emotion towards you. Maybe not as intense as how I feel about Kori, but… I can’t deny that I want to be close to you. I'm not just saying that because I'm tired of being alone. I'm not saying that out of any feelings of obligation. You've... you've changed me. And I want to be close to you.”

At Danse’s confession, Nick smiled in what seemed to be relief, though there were other untold emotions behind Nick's gaze. “Yeah, that makes sense. I can respect your loyalty to Kori. In fact, I approve of it. Just… so long as, until if you two ever go exclusive, I’d… I’d like to do this again. I just want to make you feel worthwhile. I just want you to be okay.”

Danse nodded, biting his lip. “I’m still… somewhat in shock that this happened at all. Just a few months ago, I was still uncertain what to make of your existence. It’s been… it’s been an interesting journey.”

“Well, it’s not over yet,” Nick insisted. He pressed his hand flat down against Danse’s chest, and the ex-Paladin relented, laying down hesitantly. Nick came to rest beside him, golden eyes dimmer than before. “You’ve come a long way, Danse. You have no idea how proud of you I am for that. But you’ve still got a long ways to go-- even longer now that you know what you are. You’re not going to be hopping off of this ride any time soon, right?”

Danse pursed his lip, and turned onto his back, staring up at the ceiling.

“... No. I’m not.”

And, slowly, Nick wrapped his arms around Danse, and the ex-Paladin sank into him, let the embrace consume him completely and wholly.


	23. Chapter 23

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> aaannnd back to your regularly scheduled Danse/Kori!

“Hey! Kori’s back!” Marcy made the announcement brief, getting on the speaker system, before slapping her walkie talkie at her guard post back down and going back to reading her comic book. Danse, who had been sitting just outside of Nick’s house in the setting evening sun while the old bot rested nearby, stood upright in a flash, stepping onto the sidewalk to confirm the announcement for himself.

Sure enough, there was the Sole Survivor, Minuteman coat waving in the breeze as she held her pack over her shoulder. Dogmeat trotted dutifully next to her, nothing but smiles and happy glances to his master.

Danse glanced back at Nick, who was propped against the wall Danse had vacated now, having emerged from inside. The old Synth chuckled, waving him away. “Go on, stud,” he encouraged him. “Show her you’re back in business.”

Danse tried not to blush at the nickname he’d been given a few days ago since they’d slept together, and instead steeled his nerves. He rushed to greet Kori, brushing past Curie and Piper along the way in order to be first. He ran to close the distance, and the two of them met halfway across the bridge. Dogmeat licked at Danse’s hand happily as they regarded each other carefully.

Danse was clean, had a new jacket and new armor. He’d trimmed down the mess of hair on his head and face, and was back to looking like the man everyone knew. Kori was just the opposite-- caked with dirt and dried blood, and her armor was in dire need of repairs, her hair a tangle. But her eyes widened as Danse approached, and she quirked an eyebrow curiously. She didn’t seem to be taking any chances in regards to socialization between them.

But Danse was beaming, happy to see the woman he loved alive and well… and he then cleared his throat, toning back his smile and patting her on the arm, instead of giving her the bone-crushing hug he desired.

“It’s… good to see you again, soldier,” he said, and there was a brief sparkle in Kori’s eyes at the newfound confidence in his voice. She smirked broadly, and her arm came up to firmly grasp his.

“Good to see you’re still alive,” she countered, looking him up and down. Her gaze settled on his left forearm with a deep frown, but before she could say anything, Danse let his fingers brush under her chin, redirecting her attention to his face.

“I’ll tell you later,” he promised, just before Piper rushed in to Kori’s side. The vault dweller stumbled back as she was forced to take on nearly all of Piper’s weight, and the news reporter giggled.

“So good to have you back, Blue! You’ve been out for so long, I was wondering if you were Radroach food! How are you feeling?”

Kori glanced over at Danse, before hugging Piper back firmly.

“Never better,” she promised.

“You’d better be, or I might just have to find you some Daytripper,” Hancock lamented, patting her firmly on the back as he approached. He looked up at Danse with a wary expression, but all Danse gave the Ghoul in return was a smile. It was hard. It was very hard. The corners of his lip twitched, but he held it. Long enough to seem cordial, before Deacon brushed past him and shook Kori’s shoulder.

“Come on, Hancock, it was hard enough for me to get her to shake the alcohol addiction when she came my way. Let’s  _ not  _ add a chem addiction to her health history.”

The group of companions laughed, before the small gathering of people were interrupted by a winded Preston stumbling up to them.

“Bad news,” he gasped out, and he jammed a thumb behind him towards the direction of the pavilion, where the radio was. “The Institute has been scouting the Castle. Looks like they’re getting ready for a major attack. If… if they can knock out the Castle, it could set us back to square one. We  _ can’t  _ let that happen again.”

And just like that, Kori was back to business. She straightened her weary posture, and allowed Preston to lead the way through Sanctuary, the remaining companions falling in line and being updated by those who had been previously present. “Have you gotten in touch with the new settlements?”

“I have,” the Minuteman confirmed. “I’ve sent word for all available Minutemen to rally at the Castle. We’ve  _ got  _ to win this one.”

“I know, I know,” Kori replied. “Any estimate on how long we’ll have to prepare?”

“With the Institute? There are no estimates. But if I really  _ had  _ to make one, I’d give us a day’s time to prepare defenses, then  _ maybe  _ another day and a half. No doubt they’ll have to organize their forces as well.”

“Radio the Castle and tell them to ready the artillery and to set up guard posts, turrets, mines,  _ anything _ . We’ll head out tomorrow-- there’s no way in  _ hell  _ I’ll be able to make the trip today. I know that war doesn’t rest, but… I’m only one person, Preston.”

Kori and Preston stopped, facing one another. Danse expected conflict, but the Minuteman leader only nodded. “Understood, General. Should the rest of us get ready to head out in the morning?”

“Yes, please do that,” she nodded. “I’ll restock on my own supplies. We’re  _ all  _ going to the Castle in the morning.”

Nick and Danse looked at each other as the companions split to do as commanded, and Nick walked up to the woman just as she was about to walk away. “ _ Everyone? _ ” he emphasised, wanting clarification.

“ _ Everyone _ ,” Kori confirmed. “I know what the Institute is capable of. I’m going to need all the help I can get. If you’re not feeling up to it, Nick, you’re welcome to stay behind. I don’t want you to put yourself in any situation you don’t think you can handle.”

But the old Synth “hmphed” and straightened his fedora. “Don’t think I can handle it… don’t you remember Kellogg?”

Kori pouted, before letting out a laugh and looking to the setting sun in the west. “God… feels like that was only yesterday. If you want to come, I’d be more than glad to have you.”

“I wouldn’t  _ dream  _ of stepping out of this one,” he promised. He turned to Danse, patting him on the back and letting his touch linger there. “I’ll be seeing you all in the morning, then. I’ve got to charge up.”

Danse nodded at Nick, drinking in his golden eyes and watching the android walk back down the street, before turning back to Kori. She was giving him a strange smile, and Danse furrowed his brow.

“What?”

The vault dweller crooked her head to one side, and placed her hands on her hips. “So, you and Nick, huh? When I told him to ‘try anything’ to help you, that was… well, it wasn’t off the table, but so not what I was expecting. Good for you. That's one way to overcome your Synth racism.”

Danse’s eyes widened, and his gaze flicked from Kori back to the retreating Synth, then back to her. “How did you--”

“Apparently Hancock heard you two fucking,” she said, and when Danse paled, she snorted and punched him lightly in the arm. “Relax, I’m kidding. That exchange right there was literally all I needed to see. The way his touch lingered on you like that, and you  _ let  _ it linger… that was all proof enough.”

Danse blushed furiously, stuttering for words, but Kori just laughed and patted his arm.

“Don’t worry. I won’t tell Hancock. Because then he  _ will  _ start lying and saying her heard you two fucking.”

The ex-Paladin sighed and shook his head, but he was smiling all the while. Kori folded her arms over her chest.

“Fuck, I’ve missed that face,” she admitted with a dreamy sounding sigh. She looked Danse up and down, biting her lip, before suddenly taking a hold of his arm. “Come on. Come with me to Red Rocket. I’ve got something I wanna show you.”

“Oh?” Danse allowed the vault dweller to lead him without question down the darkening streets. “For how long now?”

“Since about a week ago. You were still holed up in your house and I didn’t have time to stick around, though, but I’ve kept it safe and secret. Just for you. You’re not… you’re not mad at me for that, are you? You don’t feel neglected?”

“Kori, no, of course not,” he cried out softly, stopping in his tracks and forcing Kori to stop as well. “I understand that the Institute is priority currently; they’re an active threat and they intend to wage full out  _ war  _ on the Commonwealth. You’ve been single-handedly assembling an army all by yourself. I don’t blame you for  _ anything _ .”

But the dark skinned woman still held clear doubt in her eyes. “You’re… not just saying that to make me feel better, are you? Because I really do feel bad about not being here…”

“Kori.” Danse took both of her arms in his hands, and stared down at her with concern in his eyes. “You… you worry too much about this lone soldier. I went through some very difficult things-- things I don’t know if you would have been able to help me with. And you already have so much on your plate currently. You did enough in enlisting Nick’s help. I… it’s likely I wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for Nick. By ensuring that I had  _ someone  _ by my side through this difficult period… you’ve done all you could.”

The vault dweller pursed her lips, staring down at the bandaging around Danse’s arm, then back up to his face with a resigned smile.

“Gabriel used to say the same thing. About worrying too much about him as a soldier.”

Danse expected to feel burning jealousy or inadequacy at the mention of Gabriel, a man long dead who still held presence over Kori’s heart. Instead, he felt a strange relief at being compared to the other man. Maybe the two of them were more alike than he had previously realized.

“Now, come on,” Kori insisted, taking a hold of Danse’s wrist once again and pulling him into walking again. “You still need to see your surprise.”

Danse watched Kori as she guided him out of Sanctuary and down the street, and he  _ knew  _ that there was clear admiration in his eyes, but at the current moment, he knew that he could easily mask it as excitement just to have Kori back and alive. At least, he was hoping he could. His newfound relationship with Nick would likely help to mask his true feelings about Kori as well, just to keep things easy. No, his quickly developing crush on Nick  _ definitely _ helped.

Kori’s hand was still holding his wrist by the time they made it to Red Rocket, and she punched the button on the garage with a flourish of her hand. She pushed Danse to stand at the center of the rising door, and once it had lifted over his head, the ex-Paladin’s jaw dropped.

Inside the garage was a full suit of X-01 Power Armor, completely assembled and shiny enough that Danse could see his reflection in it even from the several feet away in which he stood. Of course, like most suits of Power Armor, there was rust and denting, but in terms of what could usually be salvaged out in the Wasteland, this suit was practically  _ flawless _ . Danse shot a look over to Kori, who had propped herself against the side of the brick wall. She only tilted her head towards the inside of the garage.

“Well, go take a look,” she encouraged him.

Danse didn’t need to be told twice. He darted inside, stopping short before the powerful armor, and he ran reverent hands over every seam, every crevice that he could reasonably investigate without dropping to his knees like some crazed worshipper.

“Kori…” Danse gulped, and he had to speak again, louder, in order for her to hear him at all. “Kori, this is… how did you..?”

“When you travel the way I have over the past two weeks,” the vault dweller said as she came to stand next to him, “you tend to stumble across things. I brought this back with me the moment I found it since, you know, your Power Armor’s… well, you don’t have it anymore.”

Danse nodded wordlessly. Of course the Brotherhood would have salvaged his armor. It was too precious a commodity to allow it to go to waste. The separate pieces had likely been distributed to other Paladins. Slowly, he let his hand drop from the armor, and he had to steady himself before turning to address Kori.

“I… I honestly don’t know what to say,” he muttered. In response, the vault dweller only chuckled, coming close and wrapping her arms around his neck in an embrace.

“Then don’t say anything. You don’t have to. Just…” She bit her lip. “Just… hold me. You know. Like we used to. You can always…  _ show  _ me your gratitude, and that works just as well for me.”

At first, Danse felt only a rush of apprehension flood through his system at the suggestion Kori was making; he still had serious self doubt about himself, serious enough that he had begun to wonder if he would only allow Nick to touch him due to their similar identities. But, he reasoned slowly with himself, if Kori was asking it of him, it was obvious she wanted it. And God, did he want her. On top of that… this could be a test. A way of seeing whether he  _ could  _ feel comfortable with human contact in such a sensual way, instead of just restricting himself to Nick, or other Synths. Not to mention… all he wanted in the whole world was to just feel Kori’s body against his again. All he wanted was to do what made  _ her  _ happy.

The ex-Paladin took a deep breath, before letting his hands fall to Kori’s waist. “I… I do want to,” he explained. “You may have to be patient with me… I’m still figuring things out for myself. Nick’s made it easier, but a part of me still… has its reservations.”

Kori only smiled gently, and Danse swallowed at the long missed sight. “It’s okay,” she assured him, before she froze up. “Well… except for the fact that I just remembered I’ve got a week’s grime on me and I should  _ probably  _ wash up before we even  _ think  _ about having sex.”

Danse froze up, too, at that shared realization, and he couldn’t help but laugh as he pulled away. “I hadn’t even thought of that,” he confessed. “I was just so happy to see you, after all of our time apart. I apologize.”

They laughed together, and the sound traield off into silence, before Kori stared up at him again.

“Do you… want to come with?”

Danse swallowed, before giving a hesitant nod. “Wouldn’t want that hot water to go to waste,” he murmured, flinching a little when Kori’s hands moved to hold his face.

“Yeah,” she muttered in agreement, before tilting her head up and his down. Her lips brushed against his, in a silent plea. “What a waste.”

After licking his lips (and hers, by consequence), Danse finally let the distance close between them. Their lips smashed together out of pure need and want, his hands pulling her body to be flush with his own. Kori sighed through her nose, fingers tangling in Danse’s hair desperately as she melted into him. The rub of their bodies together as Kori kissed Danse with everything she had pent up over the course of  _ months _ of neglecting to touch each other this way made the ex-Paladin equally as desperate in a matter of moments, even if his kissing was a bit less enthusiastic, a bit more careful, like the wrong twitch would hurt the woman in his arms.

When the vault dweller pulled away on a gasp at the hand squeezing her ass, Danse took the opportunity to sweep Kori up into his arms. The woman squeaked in surprise, arms flailing before settling around Danse’s shoulders. He laughed at her reaction, and then laughed some more as she pouted. Even outside of his Power Armor, she felt light in his arms. Not paper light-- he didn’t know what to compare it to, but he knew he was carrying something powerful, something that could decimate armies, and yet he could hold it in just his arms. Like a bomb, perhaps. Awe inspiring and terrifying.

“Let’s get you cleaned up, soldier,” he stated, carrying Kori out of the garage and around back to her shower.

The two of them stripped quickly in the small changing room just before the shower itself. Danse was completely nude before he reluctantly unwrapped his gauze-covered hand, not wanting to get the bandages wet and then let his wounded arm sit in the soggy wrappings. As he had anticipated, Kori snatched up his arm, pear-green eyes wide as she beheld the damage.

“Christ, Danse,” she whispered, “what the hell happened to you?”

Danse let her hold his arm, even with as much as he wanted to pull away and play it off. He told her the truth. “I was delirious. I had this… crazed idea that despite everything we knew about Synths… about how completely  _ human  _ they are, somehow, I’d be able to find damning proof that I was different, save for the Synth component in my head.”

“ _ You _ did this?” She looked up to him with a horror-stricken look.

“I did. I likely would have let myself bleed out if I hadn’t been so frightened of what would become of me, and if Nick hadn’t been sitting in front of my house every day. I went to him for help, in my blood-loss induced stupor.”  The color drained from Kori’s face at the revelation, but Danse shook his head. “Just so long as I get some Med-X when we get out of here, I’ll be fine. I promise. I’m okay.”

With a furrow of her brow, Kori brought Danse’s wrist up to her lips, placing a gentle kiss just above where the gash in his arm began. A warm feeling settled at the base of his heart at the action.

“Was it answer enough?” she asked softly.

“It was.”

Kori sighed through her nose, satisfied with that answer. She pulled Danse into the shower with her, and turned on the water. When the spray was hot enough, she pulled Danse close to herself, blood and dirt running off of her skin. They kissed again, and it was slower, but no less intense, no less passionate. Danse couldn’t stop the shaking of his breath as his nerves came to life, inch by inch. He jolted forwards in surprise when Kori took a hold of his half-hard cock, squeezing teasingly around the head.

“I have an old promise I made you that I intend to keep,” she said with a sultry smirk.

“A… a what?” Danse heard her words, had processed them, but didn’t remember what she had promised him. The pleasure of being touched addled his brain and gave him the wrong thing to say as a result.

But Kori only laughed, reaching behind Danse and grabbing a sponge and some soap. “Give me a good lather, and I’ll give you a nice reward,” she promised him, turning around and offering up her back. Danse cringed at the sight that met him; Kori was the worse for wear, more than she had let on. Her back was a gathering of scars and gashes, both old and new. Most of them, Danse recognized-- a Deathclaw scratch here, radiation burns there. But the new ones that were for sure going to scar were angry red, welling up above her skin.

“Are you in any pain?” he asked softly, soaping up the sponge longer than necessary in wait for her answer.

“It’s gonna sting, but I have to get it clean,” she sighed, stretching out her shoulders and placing her palms flat against the wall. “Don’t worry about me. We got blown up by a Sentry Bot and tossed around like Deathclaw chew toys, remember?”

“I wasn’t the one causing you pain then,” Danse grumbled, but regardless, he got to work. At the first pass of the soapy sponge over still raw wounds, the vault dweller hissed and flinched away, but everything after that was only rough jolting. Some of the worse ones that hadn’t been bad enough to be haphazardly stitched began to bleed again. Danse made a mental note to patch those up for her once they were done in here.

Once the rest of her was cleaned up, she kissed him deeply in thanks, and his hands came to rest on her hind end, squeezing hard. The vault dweller chuckled lightly, peeling his hands off of her before sinking down to her knees.

“I made you a promise,” Kori said up to him, smirking as she stroked his cock, “and I intend to keep it.” She pulled back the foreskin, before laving her tongue over the sensitive head of Danse’s dick, all smiles and teasing glances up.

Danse shivered, placing one hand against the wall in front of him, while the other came to tangle in Kori’s hair. He widened his stance to steady himself, biting his lip and stroking through her hair enthusiastically.

“That’s-- that’s good… fuck, Kori,” he panted, as she wrapped her lips around him and began bobbing down more and more. His cock hardened quickly in the welcoming warmth and tightness, and a flush broke out on his face and shoulders faster than either of them could blink.

Kori pulled off of him when she had worked about halfway down. “Has Nick done this for you, or am I your first in this aspect, too?”

Danse, the lovestruck fool, smiled warmly and cupped Kori’s cheek. “I want you to be my first in everything,” he confessed. He realized too late what he had said, but he kept his expression steady, hoping she wouldn’t catch the underlying meaning of his words.

Luckily, Kori only smiled wider, and enveloped his cock with her lips again, sinking nearly all the way to the base in one fluid movement. The ex-Paladin choked and couldn’t stop himself from thrusting forwards, causing the vault dweller to gag. He tried to pull back, startled and afraid that he had hurt her, but her hands came around to grope at his ass, keeping him from pulling away.

“F-fuck, Kori,  _ please _ ,” he begged, uncertain what exactly he was begging for. But Kori gave it to him, bobbing faster, sucking harder, right up until he was teetering on the edge of release When his breathing picked up and she felt the first drops of cum on her tongue, Kori pulled back, stroking him quickly and letting the sensitive underside of his head rub against her tongue.

Danse took the hint, knowing what she wanted, and let himself go. A string of moans and grunts escaped him before he came with a rough shudder, thick spurts and pulses of white coating the vault dweller’s tongue. She let most of it drip out for show, but what remained she swallowed with a self-satisfied groan, licking her fingers clean as well.

Danse stumbled back after that, allowing Kori room to get to her feet. She advanced upon him and kissed him fiercely, and he grunted in surprise as he tasted himself on her tongue. It wasn’t as sweet as Kori’s release was, not by a long shot, but it wasn’t unpleasant. At the very least, it was bearable only because it was coming from  _ her  _ lips.

When she pulled away, her pupils were blown wide and she was panting. One of her hands came to grab his, in an attempt to direct him downwards between her thighs, but Danse shook his head and pulled away.

“The water’s getting cold,” he said, taking the sponge and starting to clean himself off. “Let’s finish up in here, and then we can move this to the bedroom.”

Reluctantly, Kori nodded, grabbing the shampoo and scrubbing out her hair.

She was left further frustrated, afterwards, when Danse insisted that she allow him to patch up the open gashes on her back, but she relented. He took his time, partially to make certain she was properly tended to, and also just to tease her further. It was clear that she was deeply annoyed, and when she snuck a hand down between her legs while Danse worked, he said nothing in response. By the time they were to her bedroom, naked again, Kori was leaving desperate kisses all along Danse’s neck and shoulders, trailing behind him as he lead the way. Upon reaching the bed, he spun around, gathering Kori in his arms before falling backwards onto the bed. The vault dweller yelped, but Danse ate it up with a kiss that devoured anything she could have possibly said in response.

“What do you want?” Danse asked her breathlessly once they parted for air.

Kori bit her lip, considering her options. She ground down on Danse’s once again hard length, and he shuddered in response to the stimulation.

“How about,” she drew out slowly, “you tongue-fuck my cunt while I choke on your cock. How does that sound?”

Danse’s eyes widened, and he nodded eagerly; he  _ loved  _ the way Kori tasted, and after all of their time apart, he wanted to do only what pleased her best.

Kori granted him another hungry kiss as a reward for his submission, and turned around so that her cunt was hovering just in front of him, just tantalizingly out of reach. He smoothed his hands down dark skin, squeezing a little, and Kori giggled as she took a hold of Danse’s cock before lapping at the head. Danse’s hips bucked lightly, and he hissed at the pleasure, tensing.

“Come on, Danse,” Kori urged, wiggling her hips in front of his face, pulling her head away from his erection. She finally moved back so that she was close enough to his face for what she wanted. “Don’t expect to get something for nothing.”

With a nod he didn’t realize she couldn’t see, Danse latched his lips on to Kori’s clit, flicking his tongue back and forth rapidly over the little nub. The vault dweller gasped at the sensation, and then Danse did the same once he felt her lips wrap around the head of his cock, tongue laving over the slit.

“God, ‘s not fair,” he muttered, before continuing his work, moaning and grunting against her already dripping cunt. It smeared on his nose, before he moved higher, delving into that tight heat and thrusting in and out.

“Not fair,” Kori agreed, stroking him as she spoke, “but you can’t deny it feels good.” And with that, she took him in past her lips halfway, humming happily as she continued to pleasure Danse.

Danse furrowed his brow, sighing noisily as he continued to tongue-fuck the vault dweller. She was making it difficult for him to think, to keep doing as she wanted, and he just couldn’t have that. He had to prove that he was capable of making her feel just as good as she made him feel. So he brought up a hand, and began rubbing his thumb over Kori’s clit, back and forth, in little circles-- anything that could make her twitch or gasp.

“Mmm,” Kori hummed, and the Paladin has to choke back a whine, thrusting his tongue inside of her as deep as he could. He raised a hand and brought it down hard on one cheek in retaliation, and gave a pleased rumble at the squeak of surprise she let out.

“Play nice,” he demanded, smoothing his hand over the reddening skin. “As much as I enjoy you sucking my cock, I’m not afraid to stop all of this if you push me over the edge long before you were even ready yourself.”

“You little…” The vault dweller was cut off with a breathy sigh as Danse dove back in, grasping her cheeks roughly and pulling them apart to gain better access to her dripping core. “You… even if you did do that… as your dom, I’d… fuck, I’d just punish you later for not letting me cum. And trust me, you would  _ not  _ like it one bit.”

But her words had the opposite effect-- as she sank back down on his cock, slightly more merciful this time, he didn’t feel threatened at all. In fact, he felt… challenged. What  _ would  _ it be like to be punished by Kori? What would she have in store for him? Most importantly… would he be able to take it? He wanted to know. Oh so badly, he wanted--  _ needed _ \-- to know.

But not this time. He would give her her orgasm, since she finally was giving him a fighting chance to get her to cum first. In all honesty, Danse was pretty certain he wouldn’t last, but at least their orgasms would be closer together.

He knew he was done for once she teased her tongue deep into his slit, his balls tensing as he began to climax. Danse furrowed his brows. ‘ _ Fuck, just… just a little longer’ _ , he begged to himself, in his own mind. He forced himself to hold on, even as the pleasure grew unbearable, thumbing Kori’s clit hard and fast. But, in the end, it proved to just be too much for him; Danse gave a surprised shout as his orgasm crashed over unexpectedly, cumming down Kori’s throat hard. She held his hips firmly, making it difficult for him to fuck her throat through his high, but continued to bob her head regardless.

Danse whined once the pleasure began to border on overstimulation, and he dropped his head on the pillow beneath him. “Kori-- Kori,  _ please _ ,” he begged, thighs trembling as his body pondered whether to push up or pull away.

Thankfully, the vault dweller pulled off of him with a pop of her lips, glancing behind her and giving a low, sultry chuckle. “Come on,” she urged, lowering her hips onto his face and catching him off guard. She ground against his mouth, until he opened it and got back to work, eyes fluttering shut in concentration.

To Danse’s luck (and pride), Kori had been closer than he had thought. It took only a minute or two more of simulation before she was quivering and slicking up his mouth and chin with her release. She trembled and gasped silently, leaving Danse hardly any room to breathe, but he didn’t mind. He groaned and lapped up what he could eagerly, the taste of her making his head spin with want.

“Yeah…” Kori sighed once she finished, lifting herself off of Danse and spinning around to look down at him. After a moment of studying his face, she hummed a chuckle, leaning down to kiss him. They groaned at the taste of themselves on each other’s lips, the kiss lasting all of five seconds before the vault dweller pulled away.

“I really,  _ really  _ needed that,” she told him, gracing him with a thankful smile. Danse returned it easily, his heart swelling at the wonderful sight.

“Well, I’m glad that I could satisfy you,” he replied in turn, and he pulled her down to kiss her again. The kiss was still too short for his liking, as she pulled away and stood up and off of him with a tremble.

“What I need now, though,” she informed him as she rummaged around in her dresser for a clean shirt, “is some food, and then I need  _ sleep _ . Tomorrow is going to be hell, walking all the way across the Commonwealth to the Castle.”

“You can stay here,” Danse insisted, sitting up. “You relax. I’ll make you something.”

He stood up before she could properly protest, walking past her even though he wasn’t wearing anything. The vault dweller stumbled after him. “Danse, come on, you don’t gotta do that. You get some rest--”

“Listen, I’ve got a shiny new suit of Power Armor I can walk around in. If I know you, you’ll be making the trip on foot. I’ve got the long end of the stick. I’ll make you whatever you want just so long as you rest.”

Kori folded her arms, a pout on her lips, before she relented. “Alright, fine,” she grunted, backing away and heading towards the couch. “Squirrel stew with noodles. You’ll find everything you need under the counter.”

Danse grinned at the pouting woman, before heading off to complete the task.

Some time later, the two were sat on the couch together, both eating from their own bowls. Kori ate with chopsticks, eyes fixed on the television while Danse beheld the old holotape with a detached interest.

“That man’s robot is just a man in a tinfoil suit,” he grumbled, and Kori quieted him with an elbow in his side.

“He’s not a  _ man _ ,” she admonished him. “He’s an  _ alien _ .”

“That is very  _ obviously  _ a human.”

“The whole purpose of movies is suspending disbelief for the sake of the plot. Klaatu is an alien, Gort is a robot, and they’re  _ fucking gay _ .”

Danse snorted on his stew, chunks of squirrel flying out his nose, and Kori cackled, slapping a hand on his knee while he cleaned up the mess. She was still wheezing on her own breath by the time Danse had composed himself, and watching her lose it made him fall apart all over again. He took her stew from her hands so she wouldn’t spill it, and they ended up in a heap on the couch, holding on to each other as they laughed until they were red and gasping.

When they had composed themselves, Danse looked over into Kori’s eyes, and froze up at the glimmer of sadness he spotted there. Despite the smile on her face and her leftover giggling, it was clear that something was bothering her. Kori caught on to Danse’s confused expression, and sat up.

“What’s wrong?” she said hastily.

Danse sat up, too. “I was just going to ask  _ you  _ the same thing.”

“Me? Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m fine.”

“Something’s bothering you. Does it have to do with the Castle?”

Kori hesitated, before shaking her head and redirecting her attention to the TV. “No. No, it doesn’t have to do with the Castle.”

He arched an eyebrow at her. “So there  _ is  _ something.”

Kori pursed her lips. Danse waited patiently.

“Are you… still planning on leaving the Commonwealth? I mean… I understand that it’s dangerous for you to be here anymore, no thanks to the Brotherhood, but--”

“You want to know if I still hate myself?”

Kori cringed, before bringing her knees up to her chest and nodding. But Danse wrapped an arm around her shoulder, pulling her close.

“I do still hate what I am. I feel like so much has been stolen from me, even though they were things I never possessed in the first place. But…”

Kori glanced up and over at him.

“But there’s nothing I can do about it, and running from the Commonwealth won’t fix anything. The best thing I can do is stay here, with you, and see this fight through to the end, until I’ve come to a more solid conclusion about where I want my future to be.”

“So… is that a no?” She looked up at him hopefully, and Danse cringed a little.

“It’s a maybe,” he corrected the vault dweller gently. He tried not to show any emotion at the sinking expression on her face. “I won’t make you finish this fight alone. The Institute is going to pay for what it’s done to you, and personally, I’d like to punch a scientist in the face myself.”

That got a small laugh out of her. “Yeah, okay, that’s fair.”

The two of them went quiet. When the credits of their movie began to roll, she rested her head on his arm. They sat there in comfortable silence long after the holotape had ended, and a blank screen of white noise and static reverberated through them. Danse and Kori looked to each other at the same time, and something unspoken passed between them. Something that made Danse’s throat tight with emotion he couldn’t quite place.

“Bed?” Kori suggested abruptly.

“Bed,” Danse agreed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah they're watching "The Day the Earth Stood Still"


	24. Chapter 24

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WAR. UHN. WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?
> 
> _ABSOLUTELY **NOTHIN'!**_

It was late into the next evening when everyone arrived to the Castle at once. There was only silence among the weary, exhausted group of travelers as they trudged up the hill into the large hole in the northwest wall. Just as Kori had demanded, guard posts had been erected, and a Minuteman came to guide them all through in order to avoid the traps they had laid out for the oncoming attackers.

“Glad you could make it,  _ and  _ bring a small army, General,” the young man said, offering up a small smile.

“I do the best I can.” Once within the safety of the Castle walls, Kori cracked her back, looking around. “You’ve got people on watch throughout the night?”

“24/7, 365,” he confirmed to her, surveying all of their work proudly. “We  _ won’t  _ be caught by surprise, teleportation or not. Ronnie Shaw’s already turned in for the evening. She’ll brief you once you’re awake in the morning. We’ve set up rooms for your companions here, as well.”

“Good, good, thank you.” The young man hurried away, and Kori turned to face her group.  “I don’t know if I’ll have the time for a motivational speech in the morning, so I’ll just… give a bare bones version right now before we turn in.”

Hancock audibly groaned, along with several others, and rested his head against Danse’s right arm. Luckily, Danse was in his new suit of Power Armor, so his skin wasn’t  _ instantly  _ crawling at the Ghoul's contact. Nick rolled his eyes, hoisting MacCready further up on his back as he carried him piggy-back.

“Tomorrow will likely be the defining moment of this war,” Kori said. “It’s going to be dangerous. Probably the most intense warfare any of you have ever faced. We’re not getting out of this one unscathed, I can already tell you that. We’ll all come out with bruises and scars. Gunshot wounds. And the chance of not coming out at all… that’s a high possibility, too.”

Danse gulped. He didn’t like this speech so far. Upon glancing around, the others seemed to share his sentiment, but the vault dweller pressed on, regardless.

“Before the Great War, I never fought with weapons. I fought with words, for innocent people. Sometimes, for bad people, too. Over these last seven months, I’ve had to grow accustomed to a way of fighting I hoped I’d never be involved in. Words would do me very little against the foes I would face in the Wasteland, and this whole time-- even now-- I am terrified. Every day, I am  _ terrified _ . Very few of you know this, because I had an image to upkeep. And you all looked up to me, so much, for my marksmanship and my tactical know-how. And really, that was all just blind fucking luck.”

She stepped forwards, chin high and hands behind her back.

“But what I could not learn before the bombs fell… I have learned from you. Each and every one of you offered something new to my near non-existent survival knowledge. You  _ all  _ have talents, abilities, that have allowed you to make it this far in your own lives, in a world I could not  _ possibly  _ imagine being born in, being a  _ child  _ in, and coming out as okay as you all did. This world would have  _ destroyed  _ me before I picked up my first weapon. And yet… here you all stand. Ready to defend your friends, people you’ve only known for a short few months, with your very lives. Personally, I can’t think of a stronger bond than the ones we have forged with each other, through sunshine and darkness, in sickness, and in health.”

Kori closed her eyes. Her throat bobbed thickly as her voice cracked.

“I close my eyes, I see my life before all of this. Before the bombs. Everything can change in an instant, and the future you plan for yourself shifts-- whether or not you're ready. At some point, it happens to all of us. This wasn't the world I wanted… but it was the one I found myself in. The Commonwealth, my home. Ripped apart, and put back together. I thought… I  _ hoped _ … I could find my family. Cheat time. Make us whole again, the way we were. But now, I know. I know I can't go back. I know the world has changed. The road ahead will be hard. This time, I'm ready. Because I know, war… war never changes.”

She opened her eyes, slowly.

“And so long as we give our everything into this, so long as we watch each other’s backs… we will  _ win  _ this war. Because the one thing we have that the Institute never will, is trust. And I trust you all with my life, just as you have entrusted me yours. And I will  _ never  _ betray that. Not now… not ever. If you choose to fight with me in the morning, you’ll forever have my gratitude. Thank you, all, for… for everything you’ve done, to push us this far. Regardless of tomorrow’s outcome, we will  _ all  _ change history.”

Kori stepped back and away from the group with a nod, and everyone began to disperse. Danse took a step forwards, and stopped short when a body hit the ground. He glanced back and down, and rolled his eyes at Hancock as the Ghoul continued to sleep undisturbed.

“Don’t worry,” Deacon grumbled, picking up the Ghoul and slinging him over his shoulder. “I got him.”

“Thank you, Deacon.”

The Railroad spy just shrugged, but Danse saw the slight smirk at the corner of his lips. When Danse shifted his gaze towards Kori, she was still in the same spot she had been before, but there was a strange expression on her features as she regarded the ex-Paladin before her.

“Are you alright?” he inquired softly, coming to stand before her.

Kori bit her lip, and her gaze shot up to her right. Danse followed her gaze, freezing in his armor at the distant sight of the Prydwen.

“They support the Minutemen, to an extent. There’s a chance… a  _ small  _ chance, after I basically told Maxson to fuck off-- they’ll come to our aid, anyways, even if I’m General.”

“Maxson looks out for his soldiers,” Danse sighed, a deep longing to return settling in his heart. A longing he knew was impossible to satisfy. “And so long as you haven’t turned in official resignation papers, you’re still a Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel. Even if he hates you, you’re still under his command.”

“Are you kidding me?” Kori looked over at Danse with wide eyes. “Hates me? Maxson’s scared  _ shitless  _ of me. Did he  _ tell  _ you he hates me?”

“... More or less.”

The vault dweller snorted, slapping a hand on her knee. “Oh my God… he is such a  _ child _ . Christ. Danse, you know most everyone in the Brotherhood has high respect for me. For Maxson to get up in my face… there’d be such a split in the ranks.”

While Danse knew that, yes, she was correct… it still didn’t stop a disapproving frown from appearing on his face at the way she regarded his old friend and leader. “You wouldn’t use that power for ill will, would you? As much as I hate what happened, I harbor no ill will towards my brothers and sisters.”

“Nah. Maxson’s a cunt, but the rest of the Brotherhood doesn’t deserve any of that fallout. They’re just blind, like you were. Brainwashed into the wrong beliefs. It’s not their fault. I… honestly don’t think it’s Maxson’s, either.”

At that confession, his own hard expression softened, and he glanced back up to the blimp in the distance. “So… what  _ do  _ we do if they come, then?”

“I’ve got a direct radio link to the control deck,” Kori informed him. “If they open fire on you, get to cover and let me know. I’ll demand they stand down. After all, I’m a Paladin now. I can do that. Not to mention, Maxson  _ knows  _ not to fuck with you. I’ve made it  _ very  _ clear that you are  _ my  _ ally, and he will lose me  _ officially  _ if anything happens to you on his account and I was there to tell him off.”

Danse folded his arms-- to the best of his ability with the Power Armor. “Does he seriously value your presence that much?”

Kori gestured for Danse to follow her, and he did so. “It’s not so much that he likes  _ me  _ so much as, after everything I’ve done for the Brotherhood, my name’s gotten around and I’m almost treated like the equivalent of the Elder. He confessed to me that my addition has proved to serve a huge boost in morale, not to mention my contributions to the Liberty Prime project-- rest in peace-- have served to boost my status as well.”

“And even after you’ve stopped work on Prime, you think everyone still feels the same?”

Kori paused, but only for a moment. “Most of them, yeah.”

Danse hummed in response to that, but nothing more.

“I mean, Danse. I’m a lawyer. My job is to make people listen to me and think I’m right.”

“You sure struggled with me,” he teased her.

“Hey. Not all of them can be winners.”

The two were within the Castle’s walls now, and they came to stand before a set of double doors. Kori looked to the door, then back to Danse, before checking around to make certain they were alone.

“Why don’t you… store your Power Armor in my room?”

Something about the tone of her voice implied she didn’t want him to leave the room afterwards. He bit his lip nervously at the implications. “We could be caught--”

“ _ And  _ we could all die tomorrow,” she reminded him, opening both of the doors and gesturing inside. “Keeping things professional is the farthest thing from my mind right now, Danse, you don’t even know.”

Her expression left no room for argument, but Danse didn’t want to. After one last look around, he slipped inside, and Kori quickly closed the door behind them.

 

* * *

 

“Glad you made it in time, General,” Ronnie Shaw stated, her voice echoing across the Castle grounds as the last preparations were being made. She waved Kori to her side with a vigorous gesture. “I guess we’re about to find out if these new Minutemen really have what it takes.”

Danse watched as the two of them walked to the northwest Castle wall as he counted and recounted his ammunition, making certain that he would be well prepared for when the Synths began to arrive. Whenever that may be. He jumped a little, startled, when Deacon of all people came to sit next to him, hunting rifle in hand. The Railroad spy nodded to him as he loaded up his own weapon, and Danse took it as a sign to be at ease. He managed, at first, but the guilt of what he had done was still nagging at him. Before he could address it, however, the other man spoke first.

“I need a favor.”

The sentence caught the ex-Paladin off guard. Deacon never asked directly for anything; he always had to lead up to it somehow, or ask indirectly, or just make suggestions. Whatever he wanted from Danse, he must have been deadly serious.

“Of… course, Deacon.”

“MacCready, he’s… we’re close. And I get the feeling that I won’t be able to watch his back most of the time while we’re fighting here. I don’t blame you if anything happens, but just so long as you give it a shot… that’s all I ask. Just…  _ try _ to keep any Synths off of his back. He gets Sniper Tunnel Vision.”

Danse furrowed his brow, looking up to where MacCready was constructing his nest. For Deacon to ask  _ Danse  _ of all people for a favor meant that the Railroad spy was being completely serious about his request. He was desperate to keep MacCready safe, for reasons the ex-Paladin was certain he knew. 

“I will do what I can. I might be all over the place, but when I’m near him, I’ll be watchful.”

The other man let loose a relieved sigh, clapping Danse roughly on the shoulder. “Maybe we  _ can  _ get along, after all,” he taunted, before getting back to his feet. Before he could march off, Danse stopped him.

“I shouldn’t have been as angry with you as I was. I… I’m sorry, Deacon.”

Deacon whirled around in surprise, staring long and hard at Danse, before nodding to himself, as if he had confirmed something.

“Maybe there’s some of the old you left after all.”

“There is no old me, or new me,” the ex-Paladin replied. “Just who I am as a whole.”

“Now  _ that  _ is what I like to hear.” The Railroad spy beamed, and took another hesitant step away, before stopping short himself. His smile dropped a little.

“... Listen, Danse, I’m… I’m sorry about what I said. About wishing Maxson had finished the job. That was… uncool. I let my anger and disgust get the better of me. I just… had a hard time believing one of the Synths I’d helped freed would go on to become their enemy. I was projecting my frustration about the whole thing onto you. I know it’s not your fault. We have no control over the people these Synths become once we let them go free. But, in a way, I guess that’s all a part of the tragic beauty of it. You never know who someone is going to become once you let them loose. I just never could have imagined…”

Danse lowered his weapon, setting it in his lap as he regarded Deacon. “You’re right about that. About losing control of someone once you let them go. You can’t influence their decisions anymore. And now that I know the truth about everything, I am absolutely not proud of some of the things I did with the Brotherhood. But with this new knowledge comes the opportunity for change. To better myself. I’ll always wish you would have told me sooner, but I understand your reasoning for keeping the truth from me. I harbor no hard feelings, Deacon.”

Deacon said nothing. His relieved and grateful smile was telling enough before parting ways from Danse, leaving him alone yet again. But Deacon’s request caused him to think. Nearly  _ everyone  _ was certain that Deacon and MacCready were at the very  _ least  _ romantically involved, even though they had not yet come out officially. No one pressed, and they didn’t tell. But Danse thought of the way Deacon had come to  _ him _ , had pleaded that he protect MacCready, and his mind wandered to someone similar in his own life.

“ _ You don’t have to leave the Commonwealth. If you wanted, you could stay with me. My assistant, Ellie, she’s human. One of these days, she’s going to get old, and either retire, or die. If you wanted to fill that role, I’d be more than happy to have you. My doors are always open to you, Danse. _ ”

His thoughts still roamed and wandered. There were still several possibilities Danse was considering, but one thing he knew for certain, was that he didn’t want to leave the Commonwealth anymore. Even if his life didn’t lead him towards Kori… he wouldn’t be alone. He would  _ never  _ be alone here. Not with… not with him. Danse grunted as he himself stood, in search of a certain Synth.

He found Nick in the armory just across the courtyard, and he stood quietly in the doorway as he watched the other fiddle with the various weapons on the table. Golden gleaming eyes flickered back and forth over various types of weaponry, seemingly indecisive about which to utilize in the coming battle. Danse watched as those metal fingers trailed over a bat, and picked it up. The old Synth gave it an experimental swing, and then quickly realized he was no longer alone. Upon seeing it was Danse, Nick smirked, setting down the baseball bat and making his way towards him.

“Something I can help you wi--”

He wasn’t given the chance to finish his sentence; Danse wrapped a hand around Nick’s lower back, dragging him in, before kissing him deeply, passionately. There was a sound of surprise from the android’s throat, but it turned into a pleasantly surprised hum as a metal hand cupped the side of Danse’s face, holding him as they kissed. Danse didn't cringe at the cold; he welcomed it, in fact, as his face heated and flushed.

When the ex-Paladin finally pulled away, Nick’s eyes were all aglow, his cooling systems working overtime. He took a moment to search Danse’s face, before pulling away himself. After straightening his fedora, the old bot chuckled nervously, “So… was that for Kori, or for me?”

“Valentine, you wound me," Danse gasped mockingly, before smiling. "That was all you, Nick,” Danse promised, and he reveled in the shocked look on the Synth’s face. It quickly melded into Nick taking a hold of his hat and using it to cover his face, while shoving his other hand into his trench coat pocket. 

“I came in here to let you know,” Danse continued once Nick was looking at him again (albeit  _ clearly  _ flushed, in his own Synth way), “I’ve been considering your offer. About staying with you. And I want you to know that I--”

A crack of thunder outside interrupted them, and the sound of gunfire followed immediately after. The two men froze, before exchanging quick glances.

“Get your Power Armor,” Nick commanded, snatching up his newly modified pistol before running outside. Danse ran out with him, heading towards where he’d left his suit.

Danse looked to his right as he bolted, face paling at the sight of five Synths  _ already _ overpowering the Minutemen just outside the wall. But Kori and Ronnie Shaw were there, fighting together to keep the worst of them at bay. Danse couldn’t see over the hill of rubble and debris, but he knew there had to be at least a  _ dozen  _ already.

He ran to his Power Armor, entering in a flash from years of service inside of it, and he hoisted his gun high, before rushing to the wall where the vault dweller was making her stand.

“Hold your ground!” Kori shouted, firing a submachine gun into a group of oncoming Synths. She spotted Danse coming up, and backed up to stand next to him. “Don’t let them through the castle walls!”

They fought off as many as they could there at the northwestern wall, turrets and mines alike bursting into flame. Cait and Preston ended up joining them, and together, they all took out a Courser, before the speakers crackled to life.

“They’re attacking from the south side!”

“Go,” Kori demanded of Danse, “We’ve got it handled here.”

“Stay safe,” he commanded of her in turn, before turning tail and darting back across the Castle courtyard He ran to the south wall, where Nick, Deacon, and Hancock had set up. Nick gave him a brief pat on the arm.

“Glad you could make it, Tin Can Man,” Hancock shouted, before blowing off a Synth’s head. He cocked his weapon, before shooting the ex-Paladin a wary smirk. “Try not to point your laser rifle my way, yeah?”

“I have no intention of doing so,” Danse informed him, knocking away one of the attackers with his arm and sending it flying. “That is, unless, something like--”

Danse shoved Hancock back, before punching a Synth Strider in the face, then jammed his laser rifle into its gut and shot repeatedly until it fell over.

“--  _ that  _ occurs,” he finished. When he looked over at Hancock, the Ghoul’s black eyes were wide, blinking in the sunlight like obsidian.

“That’s… a boner I never thought I’d get,” he murmured, before running off to take down some more bots with Piper’s help. Nick snorted at him, before being tackled to the ground by another Synth. His shout of alarm spurred Danse into action, and he kicked the attacking robot off of his friend, before standing over him and shooting any others that came too close.

“My knight in shining armor,” Nick teased, and Danse rolled his eyes as he gently nudged his boot into Nick’s side. The old Synth hurried to get to his feet in front of Danse just as a Courser was teleported in, but with Danse, Nick, Deacon, and Hancock’s combined efforts, the attacker was little more than a pile of flesh and bone in just a couple of minutes. The ex-Paladin did a quick head-check of everyone present, and upon finding no one in need of serious medical attention or defense, began to retreat.

“I’m going to check on MacCready,” he informed those present. Deacon overheard, and gave Danse an approving nod before returning to his own work.

It was a bit of a struggle for Danse to climb the rubble of the Castle wall to where MacCready had set himself up on the southeast side, but he managed, and he knocked a Synth over the edge of the wall as he made his way to the sniper. He didn’t kneel down, so as not to give away his position (MacCready had covered himself in dust and debris), but Danse did speak with him as he shot over the sniper.

“How are you holding up up here?”

“Coulda used some water,” Mac admitted, coughing a little. “Getting dust in your throat isn’t really a pleasant feeling. I’m fine here, go away before you give up my position!”

“Just doing as Deacon asked,” Danse apologized, before jumping off of the wall and down into the courtyard. Almost as soon as he landed, Curie rushed up to him, in combat armor of her own, but her only weapon was a medical kit. She took a hold of his face, tilting it from side to side, before determining that he didn’t need any medical attention and rushed away towards other agonized cries.

As Danse stood up to his full height, he looked around as he rushed to rejoin Kori at the front. The courtyard remained blissfully empty, a small grace in a hectic battle. The wounded would be able to recuperate here, and cleaning up the mess of robotic bodies would also be much easier without any cluttering up the middle. So far, things were easy. The Minutemen were taking care of each and every attacker without much trouble at all, holding their ground at each wall. Danse viewed the order with a small smirk.

“ _ Not as powerful as you think you are, are you? _ ” he thought snidely of the Institute.

And, just as he had that thought… everything began to go wrong.

Up to Danse’s right, there was a shout of surprise. He looked up just in time to watch a Minuteman fly backwards, dead, as Synths were teleported up on the Castle wall. Moments after that, they began to teleport  _ inside  _ of the walls as well, in the courtyard where Danse and some of the weaker Minutemen stood.

The man at the radio fumbled for his microphone. “The walls! They’re in the walls!”

“Get them!” Danse screamed at those still standing still in shock, rushing towards the bigger group of them. Though, upon looking to his left, he spotted a Courser aiming his weapon towards Curie, who had a wounded man slung around her shoulders. He diverted his course, yelling as he bashed the man into the concrete wall. The Synth woman, yelped, eyes wide as she jumped back in shock.

“Go, go!” Danse jammed his fist into the Courser’s head, stunning the Synth. “Get him out of here!”

Hastily, the woman nodded, rushing past Danse with the wounded soldier. Danse continued to tangle with the Courser, until he had weakened the enemy to a point where he could get his Power Armored hands on his head, ready to snap his neck. But he was startled when the man smiled up at him, blood dripping from his teeth, and said:

“You would have made a fine Courser, M7-97.”

Danse ceased to breathe. He didn’t wait to hear anymore, _couldn't_ hear anymore. With an anguished shout, Danse twisted the Courser’s head and watched as the lifeless body slumped to the ground. He stood, and stumbled back, ears ringing and head pounding. _'Courser. Courser. Was... was I **supposed** to be a Courser..?_ ' He stood there, lost in thought, before a hand tugging at his arm brought him back.

“Come on, get back in the fight!” Cait shouted, thrusting Danse’s laser rifle back into his hands. “We’re taking a goddamn beating here!”

The two of them looked up simultaneously across the courtyard to the east wall, where Piper cried out as she was shot in the back by a Courser. Cait cursed, loudly, and rushed up the stairs, leaving Danse alone to figure out where he was needed next. He figured he would just start with taking out the Synths currently flooding the courtyard with the Minutemen here, before seeing if any of his other companions were in need of assistance.

He fought side by side with strangers for what felt to be hours, before minigun fire forced him to back against a wall and take cover. He grunted as a hydraulic tube became dislodged, his Power Armor suddenly significantly more difficult to move, the right leg almost impossible to lift. His gaze shot up just as a Vertibird flew over the Castle wall, and he paled. He fumbled for his comms earpiece, which Kori had given to everyone just before the day had gotten started.

“They’re here,” he gasped out, watching as two more Vertibirds joined the first in raining down fire on the Institute Synths. He knelt down to work on reconfiguring the leg so he wasn't a limping, sitting duck. “They’re here, they shot at me.”

He received no direct answer, but from where he stood, he could hear Kori shouting into her earpiece herself.

“I don’t know what the  _ hell  _ you’re all doing here, but if any of you so much as  _ scratches  _ Paladin Danse, I will personally castrate you! Paladin Danse is  _ not  _ to be harmed, I repeat, Paladin--”

Danse shot at a few Synths just as Kori fell suddenly quiet, obviously interrupted by something. She spoke up a few seconds later.

“ _ Don’t  _ test me, Maxson, I’m General of the Minutemen and your men are on  _ my  _ property.  _ Stand down _ , the Institute is the enemy  _ only _ . If Danse dies because of  _ your  _ men, we’ll be declaring war on the Brotherhood once we’re done with the Institute, am I  _ understood? _ ”

Danse’s breath caught in his throat. Kori would go to war…  _ another  _ war, after all she had fought for in this one… just for  _ him _ ?

He didn’t have time to dwell. People were dying. Synths were overrunning the compound. Danse gathered himself, and ran back out onto the field. When Brotherhood soldiers started filling the space the Minutemen had left empty due to injury or death, they never once aimed their weapons his way. Some even greeted him like a long lost friend.

They all fought, side by side, before an ear-splitting shriek echoed across the walls. Danse’s gaze yanked up to the northwest wall, and his heart plummeted into his stomach.

Kori stood facing a Courser alone, desperately clutching a gaping wound in her right side and hopping on her left leg. She lifted her weapon, firing off a clip of bullets into her attacker, before the Courser shot her in the shoulder, and she fell out of sight. Danse cried out for her, beginning to rush over, but then, to his left, he heard a shout for help. He stopped short in his tracks, glancing up and knowing that, if his heart could have dropped any lower, it wouldn’t be in his body anymore. MacCready was on the ground on the wall, wheezing and glassy-eyed with a bullet wound in his collarbone as Deacon fought off another Courser with his bare hands. It was clear that he was beginning to lose the fight as he struggled to wrest the weapon from his attacker’s hands.

Danse shot his gaze again to where he had last seen Kori. Preston was there, fighting off the Courser himself, but Kori was still out of sight. Somewhere, he could hear Cait yelling, enraged but too occupied to be of any help.

Deacon was shouting. He was calling for help. Nick was nowhere to be seen.

Danse closed his eyes, and took a deep breath… and bolted to aid the sniper and the spy. He grit his teeth as he darted up the rubble, before yanking up his laser rifle, and shooting the Courser directly in the head. The Synth stumbled back, and Deacon grabbed the man’s Institute weapon, yelling as he unleaded every last bullet into his head, until he fell still.

The two of them wasted no time in coming to hover over MacCready, and the sniper reached out weakly for Deacon once he came close.

“Shot an artery,” the Railroad spy hissed, fumbling in his pockets for a stimpack. When MacCready found Deacon’s hand, he whimpered and held it tightly to himself. Deacon stopped his search to clutch MacCready’s hand with both of his own, trembling. “Find Curie,” he begged of Danse, “please, I-- I can’t leave him.”

Danse hesitated, glancing back to where he’d last seen Kori. Preston was kneeling on the ground now, glancing around wildly and shouting something Danse couldn’t hear. Just as he was about to turn to Deacon to explain the situation, a flash of red skidded to the ground next to them. Hancock panted as he yanked out a stimpack and a Med-X. He injected both into each of Mac’s arms as he looked up at Danse.

“I can’t find Nick,” the Ghoul rasped out, chest heaving as he shook his head. “He went off to chase some Synths inside the Castle walls and I haven’t seen him since.”

Danse hissed, a metal hand clutching uselessly at the dirt as he stumbled to his feet. “Kori-- I have to-- she’s hurt. I have to check on her.”

He bolted off over the walls before any of them could beg otherwise, pulse in his stomach and his throat all at the same time. He killed any opposing Synths along the way to where he’d last seen the woman, and where Preston was still kneeling now. When the floor of the northwest wall finally came into sight, his jog broke into a sprint.

_ She was still there. _ There were no more Synths on this side of the Castle, but Kori was laying still on the ground, Preston holding his hands on both her shoulder and her side. Upon hearing the ex-Paladin approach, Preston called him over.

“We’ve got to get her to cover, away from the battle,” the Minuteman leader informed him, even as Kori hissed at him.

“Fuck, Preston, just get me a stimpack. I can’t sit this one out. I’ll work through it!”

“You’re going to get yourself killed before we even have a shot at attacking the Institute properly!” he shouted down at her, before removing his hands and motioning for Danse to pick her up. “Make sure she’s secure before you head back out here. We’re not done, yet. Not by a long shot.”

Danse scooped Kori into his arms without further pause, and the small woman immediately began to struggle in his grasp, albeit weakly.

“Fuck,  _ Danse _ , please,” she cried out, even as he ran for his life across the courtyard to the safety of the interior of the Castle, “don’t do this! One stimpack-- that’s all I need, I can finish this!”

“After  _ everything  _ we’ve been through together,” he shouted over the gunfire and the explosions, “I am  _ not  _ losing you now because I let you make your own choices, like I have for so long. Right now, you’re Knight, and I’m Paladin again. And as Paladin, I  _ order  _ you to  _ stand down _ , Knight Farnsworth.”

“What the  _ fuck _ ,” she screamed, slapping her palms against his chestplate. “That-- it doesn’t work like that!”

When Danse glared down at Kori, for the first time ever, she shrunk away under his gaze. Cowered at the intensity of it. Danse wondered what he must have looked like, for her to have that kind of reaction, but he didn’t dwell on the thought. He only took advantage of it.

“It works like that  _ now _ ,” he said, before slipping inside the Castle’s walls. Immediately, Curie was there, hurriedly speaking in French as she directed Danse to follow her. He was lead to a temporary sick bay, and there, she directed him towards a cot, which he laid Kori down on. One metal finger brushed away hair off of her face.

“Don’t you  _ dare  _ leave,” he commanded, before turning heel and rushing back outside. Even the desperate call of his name did not stop his footsteps.

Upon re-emerging into the Castle courtyard, the ex-Paladin was once again faced with the reality of war. MacCready was back to work, but Deacon had not left his side, hovering close and fighting off any Synths that dared venture too close. The Sniper was firing with his non-dominant hand, slower but still deadly accurate.

Hancock was suddenly by his side, dragging him to the stairs up the east wall. “Cait and Piper’ve been cornered by two Coursers. I need your help.”

“Have you seen Nick?”

The Ghoul shook his head. “We ain’t got time to worry about Nick, we’ll search for him after this is all over and dealt with. Right now, we gotta worry about who’s here, and that includes the Institute. Pull up your big boy pants, we’ve got to keep this fight going.”

Danse nodded, taking one last look over the war-torn Castle, the scattering of Minutemen and Brotherhood alike, before following Hancock with a new mission in mind.

Protect those who remained at  _ all  _ costs.

 

* * *

 

Silence was foreign, by the time evening rolled around. And yet, it re-welcomed itself without warning, settling in the falling ash and dust.

Startled, Danse glanced up from the Courser he had just eliminated on his own-- one of too many to count. The silence had settled in sometime during his one-on-one battle, and now that he was hearing it, he wondered if he had gone deaf, if something had exploded nearby and he had lost his hearing without realizing it. But the perpetual hum of his damaged and scratched Power Armor was a constant, and as he slowly stood, out in front of the Castle’s northwest wall, he realized… 

It was over. The onslaught had ended.

Minutemen and Brotherhood soldiers alike slowly rose from the ashes, looking around at each other and the dead warily, scarcely believing it had all ended. One relieved, victorious cry rose from one throat to another, and only then did Danse completely relax, slumping back against the wall next to himself. Joining him was Hancock and Piper, the woman slumping down and sobbing, while Hancock emphatically pounded his fists into Danse’s arm.

“Holy fucking shit,” he marveled, laughing excitedly. “We-- holy fuck they-- we just shot-- and then they-- oh my  _ God _ .”

Danse was just about to let his head roll back, to close his eyes and to rest a moment, but then he jolted with a start.

“Nick,” he whispered, heart sick, then he looked down to Hancock. “ _ Nick. _ We have to find Nick.”

Hancock’s relief quickly melded back into professionalism, and he waved for Danse to follow him with a wave of his hand. “I’ll take you to where I last saw him. Piper, you good?”

“Will be,” she croaked out, fumbling with her last stimpack and jamming it into her thigh with a cringe.

“You fought hard, Piper,” Danse praised her as he rushed to follow Hancock. Eventually, he just hopped out of his Power Armor, the machinery too damaged and slow for things to go as quickly as he would have liked. He ignored the glares of the Brotherhood soldiers as they called for medics to help with recovery, holding his head high.

Hancock lead Danse inside the Castle walls. “He and I got cornered in here,” he explained, before pointing down to the left. “Nick drew a fuckton of them off that way, and then… well.”

“Should we go together?” Danse asked.

Hancock looked up at Danse with a slightly surprised expression. “Together? Isn’t your ex-boyfriend out there somewhere in those soldiers, Tin Can Man? Sure you don’t want to uphold your righteous sensibilities or whatever in front of your old buddies?”

“They banished  _ me _ . I do miss my brothers and sisters… I think I always will. But you’re my friend now, Hancock. If they have a problem with that, they should have thought twice about kicking me out after everything I did for them. I’ve shown you the worst side of me, and  _ still  _ you’ve chosen to fight by my side. Those soldiers out there…” Danse pointed to the courtyard. “They can’t say the same.”

The moment Danse finished speaking, Hancock blinked away the surprise in his eyes. Then, he hummed in interest, and fought back a beaming smile as he clapped a hand on Danse’s back. “Well… with that being said, time’s still ticking, and Nick is off that-a-way somewhere. So… after you.”

With a nod, Danse pulled up his weapon-- hopefully, for the final time that day-- and forged ahead.

Things looked promising as they came across dozens of Synth corpses, but at the first drop of blood, the two of them froze up. Blood could only mean two things: a human, and ally… or a Courser.

“Hancock.”

The Ghoul glanced up at the tremor in Danse’s voice.

“Tell me Nick is okay. Tell me… he’s just… resting somewhere ahead. Was incapacitated and unable to fight, but he’s okay.”

Hancock chewed his lip, gaze flickering at Danse’s sweating, trembling face.

“... Nick’s a tough bucket of bolts. A couple of Synths would  _ never  _ be enough to put him out for the count. Besides, they’re a source of repairs for him. More dead Synths are a good thing, that’s more parts for him to scavenge for. As for the blood…”

Hancock trailed off, unable to come up with anything positive to say. Danse didn’t blame him. They continued onwards.

The last corner they rounded, Danse’s gun clattered the the ground, and he cried out in alarm.

A Courser lay dead, head cracked open, and a crowbar lay just a few inches away. Against the far wall Nick sat, chest heaving with breath he did not have to give as he held his missing left arm socket. His leg, as well, was missing from the knee joint down, and there was a puddle of oil around him. His cooling fans were the loudest Danse had ever heard them, even as the old bot fought to give them a relieved, shaking grin.

“Took you long enough,” he choked out, oil trickling down his lip as Danse scrambled to his side. “Figured you all forgot I existed.”

“Can I move you?” Danse asked, hands clenching and unclenching as he knelt besides Nick. “Is your condition stable?”

“Yeah, go ahead and pick me up,” Nick sighed, and Danse scooped him up without hesitation, holding Nick close. “Hancock, grab one of those dead Synths for me, I’ll need an arm and a leg.”

“You got it.” 

Nick shuddered as Danse held him close, resting his head in the crook of Danse’s neck. The Ghoul noticed immediately, but said nothing, grabbing a dead Synth by the arm and dragging it along. He did offer up a knowing smirk, though.

“You’re… surprisingly light,” Danse murmured, breath washing over Nick’s cheek.

“Well, I  _ am  _ missing a limb or two,” Nick reminded him, voice equally as soft. There was background white noise to it, unmissable static, but his words were still understandable. “But yeah, the metal’s light, and I’m lacking in the organ and muscle department.”

“Has this happened before?” Danse asked.

“Oh, yeah, you don’t live over a hundred years and  _ not  _ lose something important. But it’s no problem; just make or grab a new limb and replace the broken one. After today’s fight, I’m pretty sure I’ll never want for parts again.”

“I would hope so,” Danse chuckled.

The three of them emerged from the Castle walls together into the courtyard, and Danse barely noticed when Hancock stopped short. When he did, he glanced back at him, brow furrowed. The Ghoul stared forwards, as if he had seen the worst horror, and had been turned to stone.

“Hancock--”

Nick hit Danse in his arm, which caused him to redirect his attention forwards, and every vein in Danse’s body turned to ice.

Surrounded by four Brotherhood Knights in pristine Power Armor, stood Elder Maxson.


	25. Chapter 25

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ... yeah i got nothin to say other than LET NICK VALENTINE ORGASM, BETHESDA YOU COWARDS--

Surrounded by four Brotherhood Knights in pristine Power Armor, stood Elder Maxson. He stood unwavering, tall and proud, hand behind his back, but upon seeing Danse, he himself had frozen like stone, and his eyes were wide. What had once been an overpowering presence had been kept at bay, if only for a moment, from relative shock and discomfort.

And what a sight Danse must have been; clutching an old and broken Synth in his arms like a cherished lover, with a Ghoul at his side, within arm’s reach and dragging a Synth body to recycle, not destroy. Even as Danse’s arms trembled and he debated whether to run towards or away from Maxson, he gulped, and held his ground.

“Elder,” he said softly in timid greeting, handing Nick to Hancock wordlessly. There was a chance Arthur would shoot him, right here, right now. And Nick seemed to know it, too-- the old Synth shook his head, trying to cling on to Danse, but Hancock managed to tear him away, doubt and fear clearly written in black eyes.

Danse attempted to move forwards, but all four Knights lifted their guns simultaneously. Danse stopped, even as Maxson remained unflinching.

“I’ve come,” he informed Danse, and all those present, “to oversee recovery operations, and to ensure that everyone’s needs are met in this difficult aftermath.”

“Did Kori--”

Maxson shot a venomous glare Hancock’s way when the Ghoul began to speak. “Do not  _ speak to me _ , filth!” he shouted.

“Then how ‘bout  _ I  _ talk to you, ya shitty  _ coward _ ,” came a heavily accented Irish voice. Cait marched towards the group, hips swaying and bat slung over her shoulder. A Synth skull hung off of the bottom of the bat, like a charm. She glared daggers into the Brotherhood Elder, coming to stand in front of Danse. “As resident  _ bitch  _ and bastard, I’m here to ask ya, did Kori give you permission to plant your ass on Minuteman territory?”

The Elder stared at the Synth skull, for a moment, before regaining his composure. “From what I’ve been told, Paladin Farnsworth has been incapacitated and is currently unfit for lead or duty. Therefore, someone should be present to oversee recovery, and since my men participated in this battle, it is only fitting that the next to lead would be--”

“I apologize, sir. That would be  _ me _ .”

All eyes yanked to the west. Preston Garvey approached, wiping blood off of his nose with the back of his hand and glowering, laser musket slung over his shoulder. He nodded towards Cait and the others, before turning to Elder Maxson. Danse had never seen such coldness in the usually warm man's eyes.  “I was the leader of the Minutemen before Kori showed up. Which means, if she’s out of service, leadership defaults to  _ me _ . And since this is  _ Minuteman  _ territory, I’ll have you know that I don’t much appreciate the way you’re treating  _ my  _ soldiers.”

Hancock shifted Nick in his arms nervously, glancing this way and that. Nick simply closed his eyes, resting his head on Hancock’s shoulder and trying to make himself small. Preston took another confident step forwards, until he was the one in front of Cait and Danse.

“Unless you’re here to extend support to  _ everyone  _ who was injured, Synth and Ghoul alike, then I suggest you clear out, because otherwise, your support is not wanted.”

“Should you chose to support such  _ monstrosities, _ ” Maxson snarled, “then you may. The Brotherhood is more than happy to offer aid to any and all  _ humans _ , and you and your Minutemen can throw away your resources to those unworthy of it. But if you still wish to remain stubborn and pig-headed, then I will say the word, and you can deal with the bodies all on your own.”

Preston looked ready to say just that, but Danse’s firm hand on his shoulder stopped him. Again, the Knights raised their weapons, but Danse didn’t shy away. He stood taller, and walked forwards without fear.

“Fuck,  _ Danse _ ,” Nick hissed, voice anxious static.

“We would be  _ more  _ than appreciative of your aid, sir,” Danse stated, hands relaxed at his sides. “Please pardon my companions-- they’ve formulated an incorrect opinion of you and your personality based on the Brotherhood’s actions as a whole, and my banishment. They’ve connected it all to you as a person, which is incorrect and foolhardy. I will personally oversee medical compensation and aid for any Ghouls and Synths myself along with our medic, Curie, and you may focus your team’s efforts on humans. There are more humans than non-humans, regardless.”

Maxson’s eyes were narrowed, and Danse prepared himself to be shot at, to take it all so that his companions behind him would not be harmed. But the Elder lifted a hand, and then lowered it, and so too did the Knights lower their weapons.

“Leave it to you, of all people, Danse, to somehow convince me not to shoot you for daring to speak to me so cordially.”

“I’m not taking any chances. I’m only trying to be reasonable. These people need help, and I intend to get it to them, even if my companions do not approve.”

Arthur sighed heavily through his nose, before turning to his Knights. “Send out the word. We’ve been given permission to operate as necessary. Clear out the Synth corpses for destruction--”

“We’re keeping the Synths,” Danse butt in. “We need their parts. You may make a pile of them in the corner over there, but they are not to be destroyed.”

Again, the Elder’s nostrils flared, but he kept his temper. “Very well then. Gather the Synths and place their bodies over there, clear out the dead for cremation, and extend medical aid to any humans as necessary. Danse, you will lead me to Paladin Farnsworth immediately.”

Danse clenched his fists, and nodded. He spoke to Hancock without turning around. “Take Nick someplace safe, and help him with whatever he needs to repair himself. I’ll join you shortly.”

“I’ll stay out here,” Preston stated. “Make sure the Brotherhood are behaving.”

“I have faith in them.” Danse squared his shoulders, and bade for Maxson to follow him. The Elder did so, and two of the Knights followed.

Curie rushed towards Danse once he was in the medical bay, but stopped short upon seeing Elder Maxson and the Knights.  “I… uhm… m-may I… assist… you?”

From within the room, Danse could hear Kori. “Curie? Is everything alright?” the vault dweller called.

The Elder waited not a moment more. He shoved his way past Danse and into the room, and he quickly followed.  Kori sat up, wincing and holding her side. She’d been stripped of her shirt, only in a bra and with bandaging over her wounds. Her right leg was in a brace, suspended on a pillow, and Danse paled at the knowledge that it must have been broken, any stimpacks having been applied too late to serve any use.

“This isn’t your territory,” the vault dweller snarled at the Elder once he entered.

“No, it isn’t,” he agreed, and he snapped his gaze around to glare at Curie when she tried to get him to leave. Once she fell silent, he turned to address Kori again. “But this is  _ everyone’s  _ war. It’s not just the Brotherhood against the Institute anymore. Unfortunately, it cannot be so.”

“I helped you with Liberty Prime,” Kori barked. “We got him everything he needed--”

“ _ Except  _ for a reliable power source,” the Elder explained, “which now lies in the hands of the Institute. We were intercepted in our own quest to retrieve a Beryllium Agitator, and were defeated by Institute forces. They now have a powerful, sustainable energy source, which they will likely utilize to further their own nefarious schemes. However, without Liberty Prime, there is nothing we can do.”

“So that’s what this was about then?” Kori sat up further, wincing as she did so. “You didn’t come help out of the goodness of your heart… you need our help. The Minutemen’s help.”

“ _ We  _ do not need the Minutemen for  _ anything _ .” Maxson bristled, and straightened out his beard. “The Minutemen, on the other hand, need  _ us _ , and seeing as you have refused to work with the Brotherhood of Steel until it was too late, we have chosen to redirect our efforts into supplying  _ your  _ army with anything you may require. This war is in the Minutemen’s hands, now, and effectively, yours. Since you are Paladin, it is my duty as Elder to make certain you are adequately supplied and prepared to face the Institute. Therefore, I propose a temporary, unofficial alliance. We will work together unconditionally until the Institute is destroyed, then beyond that point, due to your negligence and lack of cooperation, you will be dishonorably discharged from the Brotherhood of Steel.”

“Oh my  _ God _ ,” Kori groaned, “ _ finally _ . Took you long enough to grow a goddamn pair.”

Danse snorted, even despite his shock, but he quickly composed himself when Maxson furrowed his brow back at him.  “If you wanted to leave the Brotherhood,” Maxson frowned, “you could have resigned at any time.”

“It was going to be better to piss you off to a point where you just kicked me out,” the vault dweller scoffed. “Childish, I admit, but right now,  _ very  _ satisfying.”

“... Danse… I cannot believe you have stuck with this woman.”

“I have my reasons.”

Elder Maxson stood, straightening his coat out. “When you are fit for duty again, meet me on the Prydwen so that we may discuss a further course of action against the Institute. All of my resources are now yours.”

“Sweet, does that mean I get access to your alcohol stash?”

He ignored her attempt at a joke, heading back out of the room without further statement. The Knights followed closely behind, and Danse took a seat at the edge of Kori’s bed.

“That went… surprisingly well,” he mused quietly. “How are you feeling?”

“Sore as fuck,” Kori sighed. “Stiff, and my leg is throbbing. Probably the worst I’ve ever seen out here, which is a miracle. How’s everyone else?”

“Nick’s suffered the most serious injuries, having lost an arm and a leg. Hancock may have broken ribs, but he’s currently on too many drugs to make an accurate assessment. Piper is relatively unscathed, same as Cait. MacCready may have a broken collar bone from being shot, and Deacon has a large gash on his head and a fractured arm. Preston has a broken nose, and I believe he was shot in the leg, but I can’t be certain.”

“And you?”

Danse sighed, rubbing his head. “I may have a concussion, but there’s no way to tell unless serious issues arise later. And, other than some back issues from prolonged extensive Power Armor use, thanks to your gift, I’m fine. The armor took a beating, but I’m okay.”

“Good,” Kori sighed, settling back down, “good. That’s good. So everyone will be okay. God, another stroke of luck.”

“I hope you’ve got a little more left in you,” the ex-Paladin joked lightly. “We still have yet to figure out how to get into the Institute and destroy it, and to take another beating like that… I don’t know if we’d last.”

The vault dweller remained silent. She closed her eyes, and sighed out through her nose. Danse changed the direction of the conversation.

“I know that all you want to do is the right thing,” Danse said, “but please don’t push yourself, Kori. You’re too important, and not just because of your knowledge and ties to the Institute. As my friend, you’re--- I couldn’t cope with losing you. If you had continued to fight today, I could have--”

“I’ll rest properly when the Institute is destroyed,” she replied, eyes still closed. “When I’m cleared, I’m getting right back out there. I don’t have the time or luxury to rest. None of us do. I’ll be careful, sure, but the world is depending on me, Danse. I brought Shaun into the world, and he’s the reason there are Synths like there are today, Coursers, Striders. He’s the reason the Institute has become as powerful as it has. I have to stop him.”

“You can’t  _ do  _ that if you can barely stay on your own two feet!” Danse argued. “Your leg is going to heal completely before you do  _ anything _ .”

Kori pursed her lips, and turned her head away from Danse.

“Then let me rest. Because someone has to be able to stand up to them.”

The ex-Paladin sighed, concern in his shoulders and face as he placed a hand on Kori’s arm. “Kori, I understand that you’re afraid, but the fate of the Commonwealth isn’t worth risking your mental and physical health. You’re only one person.”

“One person with the fate of mankind riding on her shoulders. Danse, please… just… leave. I know what I have to do, and I can’t do that right now, and I just… I want to be left alone. I need to think. I’ll probably be stuck here tonight, so you can sleep in my room. But for now… I need to think.”

He didn’t want to leave her alone, but it was her choice. With a shake of his head, Danse stood. “Please take it easy,” he begged, before walking out of the room.

 

* * *

 

Nick fiddled with a guitar the Minutemen had salvaged and stored away, spending likely longer than necessary tuning it as he tested out the function in his newly attached arm. His left arm was completely new, smooth pseudo-skin, and while they were at it, they’d also replaced his right hand as well, so that his hands were completely smooth, no breaks, no tears. Just soft and warm in the setting sunlight. His white dress shirt was all he wore, sleeves rolled up, and he only had on underwear on his lower half. No one questioned his need for it, given that he had no genitals, and he didn’t explain himself.

He fumbled with the strings of the guitar as Danse held his left knee in his hands, tampering with the wires and the screws there. There were several screws in between his teeth as he worked, determined to get the old Synth back in working order.

“Thanks for the help with the knee,” Nick said, smiling up at Danse and squinting against the sun that shone through the window of the room they’d holed up in to keep out of the Brotherhood’s way. “I could have done it myself, but, you know… creaky old back of mine makes it hard to bend over for that long unsupported.”

“It’s my pleasure to help you,” Danse said between clenched teeth, only to keep the screws from falling out. He plucked one from his mouth, and worked it into the appropriate hole.

The old Synth nodded, before sighing and leaning back a little. “Not sure how I feel about this truce. I know you want to make sure everyone gets the best help they can, but… there’s quite a few Ghoul Minutemen out there, Danse. That could cause problems.”

“Kori won’t stand for it,” the ex-Paladin assured him. “At the first sign of trouble, she’ll ban all Brotherhood interaction with the Minutemen, and if they get aggressive, she’ll wage war on them.”

“You really think she’s going to measure up to that statement? It’s a big deal… most everyone supports the Brotherhood outside of the Commonwealth. Word would spread… it could get messy.”

Danse pursed his lip, and set back to work on Nick’s leg. “Kori is extremely bright and capable. She wouldn’t make such a threat if she weren’t serious about following through with it, and knowing exactly  _ how  _ to do so as well.”

“The cost would still be great,” Nick warned him. “Even if she has a plan, she’ll need an army behind her back. People  _ will  _ lose their lives. She can declare war if she wants, but whether people will willingly follow her is another question.”

“I… I suppose you have a point there.” The ex-Paladin frowned, and shook his head to get back into his task. Just as he was popping another screw back in, Nick strummed the guitar, and a perfect chord was the result for his previous efforts. He chuckled gleefully at the perfect sound, before shifting it to A♭ major. To Danse’s surprise, the old Synth began to softly sing.

“ _ Where the light shivers offshore  
_ _ Through the tides of oceans,  
_ _ We are shining in the rising sun  
_ _ As we are floating in the blue,  
_ _ I am softly watching you.  
_ __ But boy, your eyes betray what burns inside you… ”

Danse looked up at Nick, and stopped him before he could continue. “I haven’t heard this song before. They don’t play it on the radio, and it hasn’t circulated as a folk song, as far as I am aware.”

“Oh. It’s just…” Nick shrugged bashfully. “It’s just a little something I remember from before the bombs fell.”

“Keep playing,” Danse begged. “It’s… very nice.”

The old Synth nodded, and began to strum again. Danse got back to work.

“ _ Whatever I feel for you,  
_ _ You only seem to care about you.  
_ _ Is there any chance you could see me too?  
_ _ 'Cause I love you.  
_ _ Is there anything I could do  
_ _ Just to get some attention from you?  
_ _ In the waves I've lost every trace of you.  
_ __ Where are you? ”

“ _ After all I drifted ashore  
_ _ Through the streams of oceans;  
_ _ Whispers wasted in the sand.  
_ _ As we were dancing in the blue,  
_ _ I was synchronized with you,  
_ __ But now the sound of love is out of tune. ”

At that point, Danse had finished his work on Nick’s leg, and he quietly set down the screwdriver so as not to disturb Nick. He was deep into it, his concentration fragile as he devoted all of his attention to the guitar in his hands.

“ _ Whatever I feel for you,  
_ _ You only seem to care about you.  
_ _ Is there any chance you could see me too?  
_ _ 'Cause I love you.  
_ _ Is there anything I could do  
_ _ Just to get some attention from you?  
_ _ In the waves I've lost every trace of you.  
_ __ Where are you? ”

His strumming continued, as if there was more to the song, but when Nick realized Danse was staring, he slowed to a halt, blinking slowly, sheepishly. The ex-Paladin was staring at Nick dreamily, a hand cupping his own chin as he stared.

“That bad, huh?” the old Synth joked, laughing nervously.

But Danse only smiled broader, and even though his heart hammered in his chest, he stood up, and came to lean over Nick. He knew the words of that song held weight, more than he could process. They weren't just sweet nothings; Nick wasn't like that. Nick's words _always_ held purpose, whether Danse was too dense to understand or not. But this time, he knew.

“You know,” he said, “I felt like there wasn’t room for anything in my life besides the Brotherhood. I’m glad I was wrong.”

Nick smiled sheepishly and ducked his head down.  “You keep talking to me like that,” he teased, “I might think you’re interested in me.”

"Oh, stop that. You know I am." Danse pressed onwards despite Nick’s statement. “You fought hard today,” he praised Nick, placing a hand on his shoulder. “And then you suffered alone. If I could have, I would have come to find you sooner, and I’m sorry. I want to make it up to you.”

“Oh?” Nick looked up at Danse with an arch to his non-existent brow. “Make it up to me? I mean… this is war, Danse. Good people get hurt, it’s just a reality. And if I could make things easier for everyone else, it was a sacrifice well worth making.”

“But you did suffer through a lot of pain today. Now… I want to make you feel just the opposite, if you’ll allow me.”

He could feel Nick tense up beneath his hand, and his head jolted back ever so slightly. “You… uh… I… that’s not… really necessary, I just--”

“Please?” Danse was leaning down, whispering in the shell of Nick’s ear and hoping that it would be enough to elicit a positive response. “Decorum prohibits it… but I feel like being close to you right now. I’d love it if you would indulge me…”

Somehow, Danse’s words had the desired effect; the old Synth shuddered, and sighed.  “Here? Now?”

“It feels sufficiently secluded,” Danse replied. “Kori has given me permission to sleep in her room tonight, if that would make you more comfortable.”

“No. No, we can…” Nick glanced at the small wooden door, which did not lock, before looking back up to Danse. “Here’s fine. Here’s fine.”

Danse smirked, squeezing Nick’s shoulder. “Trade me positions,” he said. I want you on my lap. And I want you to show me how to get your gears turning… pun intended.”

Nick snorted at that, but he did as he was asked, standing as Danse took his spot. Nick gulped, and licked his lips, before hesitantly coming to straddle Danse’s lap. Slowly, he unbuttoned his shirt, fingers trembling and newly covered right hand making the process difficult. Once his chest was bare, all of the seams revealed to Danse, he took a shaking hold of Danse’s right hand. His head was a mere halo against the sun peeking over the only window in the room, high and small.

“Are you… sure about this?” He regarded Danse’s expression carefully. All Danse could see was how wonderful the old Synth looked in the setting sun behind his head. To think, only a few months ago, he could have been terrified and disgusted by this sight, but now... all he could feel was a deep sense of admiration and awe.

“I am.” Danse nodded, and Nick’s breath stopped at the determined look on Danse’s face. The man beneath him was radiating confidence and admiration, and it seeped into him when Danse leaned up and kissed him with fervor.  When the two of them parted, the old bot nodded, guiding Danse’s hand to a seam that stopped just above where his groin would be, just beneath the hem of his boxers. He pulled the pseudo-skin to one side, and the ex-Paladin took the hint, slipping his fingers inside, albeit hesitantly.

“The wires,” Nick mumbled, suddenly shy and reserved. “They’re, uh… when the connection points get rattled, it’s… it feels good. Just… pinch, pull, twist… I’ll tell you if it’s too hard or too soft.”

Nodding, Danse took a deep breath. His free hand snaked around to hold at Nick’s lower back, while the one inside him gathered a bundle of wires, and gave a dragging tug. He watched, enraptured, as Nick’s back bowed to follow the motion, a drawn out groan a reward for his experimenting. The surprisingly human action and sound sent a jolt through Danse, and he tugged again, faster.

“Oh, God,” Nick groaned, shaking in Danse’s grasp.

“Strange,” Danse murmured, twisting the bundle in his hands back and forth, and Nick sucked in a sharp breath. His hands, which had previously been on his own thighs, shakily came up to grasp onto Danse’s shoulders.

“In-- In my neck, too,” he informed the ex-Paladin, tilting his neck to the right to expose the left side. “Here. Same deal.”

Cautiously, Danse let a hand venture up into the hole in Nick’s neck. His hand jerked back, startled when Nick’s whole body convulsed because of something he did in his groin, but the old bot leaned into Danse’s touch, encouraging him.

“Green,” he whispered, and that was all Danse needed to hear, though it did cause him some confusion for a moment. He hadn't anticipated hearing anyone other than himself use a safeword, and yet... hearing it from someone else's lips... hearing someone giving themselves so wholly to Danse in this way was like forbidden nectar, and he shivered at the mental revelation. Then, he steeled his nervous hands, and delved inside of Nick’s neck. The first wire he pulled and tugged elicited a staticy moan, and for some reason, that made Danse’s cock throb with desire.

“Damn,” he whispered, pulling harder, before letting them snap back into place, in both his gut and his throat. Nick trembled, and bucked his hips against Danse’s thigh, a motion so human, Danse’s cock twitched, hard, clearly straining inside his pants. He looked down, finally noticing his predicament, and his lips parted on a quiet gasp of surprise. The android in his lap looked down, too, and chuckled.

“Always such a good soldier to stand at attention for me,” he teased, and reveled in the way Danse’s face went scarlet. The ex-Paladin fixed the sudden power-shift by rubbing two of Nick’s abdominal wires together, stealing all of the breath from his non-existent lungs and causing him to rut unconsciously against Danse’s thigh again.

“Do you… feel anything when you do that?” Danse asked, so quiet he may have been asking only himself.

“Not enough to get off, but… a little,” Nick confessed, smiling shakily. “Got  _ some  _ sensitive wires there, but most of them are where you’re at now-- _ oowww, oh fuck _ .”

Danse shivered at the utter lust dripping from Nick’s voice, garbled and distant as it may have sounded. They clashed lips again, moaning into each other as Nick pressed himself closer, almost on top of Danse’s confined cock now. Suddenly, Nick was pulling away, Danse’s hands slipping out from his neck and his abdomen, and Danse looked up with concerned, confused eyes. But the old bot was still smiling as he pointed down to the floor, where Nick’s trench coat was sprawled out.

“Lay down there, and get those pants off. Leave your underwear on.” As he said this, Nick removed his own underwear, and Danse only had a moment to think how strange Nick looked without any genitals, before shrugging it off and doing as the android asked. He laid out on the floor on the trenchcoat, before Nick was crawling on top of him, and he ground down on Danse before swallowing up his moan of surprise and pleasure.

“Keep touching me,” the Synth commanded, and Danse nodded breathlessly as his left hand slipped inside of Nick’s torso this time. His right came to cup at the back of Nick’s head, holding him so that he could kiss him indefinitely, kiss him and hold him as close to himself as possible.

“I don’t want to lose you,” Danse confessed when Nick parted to gasp for air, more out of instinct than any true need. When the ex-Paladin’s words processed in his lust-addled mind, Nick frowned, and cupped the side of Danse’s face, still grinding down against him. Danse closed his eyes, and leaned into Nick’s touch with a shaking sigh.

“You won’t lose me,” Nick promised. He pulled up from Danse to look down between them, still grinding against his confined cock, and Nick groaned at the sight that greeted him-- Danse, with his shirt rucked up, his hair all askew, his face deep red. He licked his lips as he looked up at Nick, panting and meeting Nick’s thrusting with his own, a damp spot at the front of his boxers. The android took a hold of the hem, pulling it down just enough so that the head was free. The waistband rubbed up against the sensitive underside, causing the ex-Paladin to whimper.

“Yeah,” Nick groaned, voice nearly completely static as Danse continued to blindly fumble with the wires in his gut. “You’re not gonna-- I’m not going anywhere. I’m here, Danse.”

Danse bit his lip, and rocked Nick in his lap with a particularly hard thrust. Pre-cum dripped from the head onto his stomach, and he had to close his eyes to gather himself, before doubling his efforts in bringing Nick pleasure. He bunched a great number of wires together, and the startled euphoric shout was music to Danse’s ears.

“Then I’ll stay, too,” he stuttered out. “I won’t leave the Commonwealth.”

“W-what?” Nick tried to stop, but Danse’s hand was reducing him to basic thought and need, and he couldn’t stop the thrusting of his hips.

“I’m going to stay here,” Danse promised. “I… I tried to tell you earlier, but… we were interrupted. I-- I accept your offer.”

Nick whined, and turned his head to one side, desperately fighting to gather himself enough to speak. “But… K-Kori--”

“I’m going to tell her, too,” Danse stated, breath coming quicker as his own pleasure began to grow. “I’ll stay with you, out of her way. I’ve made my decision, Nick.”

Finally, Nick managed to stop moving, and he took a rough hold of Danse’s wrist.

“No,” he gasped out. “No, you don’t… you don’t have to  _ choose _ , Danse. This has  _ never  _ been about choosing one person over the other.”

Danse furrowed his brow in confusion, attempting to sit up. “I don’t… understand--”

Nick sighed, and pushed Danse back down with a small chuckle. “Let’s finish what we’ve started here, and  _ then  _ we can talk, hmm? I was close, Danse.” He laughed again at the wide-eyed look he recieved in response, before he released Danse’s hand and got back to grinding. “Now, come on… keep going…”

Hesitantly, Danse got back into what he was doing, pinching and twisting wires inside of Nick, until the old bot was panting ahd trembling above him again. It was only a few minutes before he arched his neck, garbling out, “C-close!”

Danse nodded emphatically, increasing his efforts even as his own thoughts grew frantic as he approached the edge. He stared down at his hand in Nick’s stomach, and his own cock leaking between their bodies, red and twitching, ready to blow, and then he looked back up to Nick’s face.

“Please,” he begged, and Nick started to go stiff, poised right on the edge of climax. “Please, Nick,  _ cum _ .”

And so the old Synth did, completely seizing up and letting loose a static cry as his body tensed. His thighs locked around Danse’s hips, and as his trembling and his aftershocks caused him to bore down on the hard, aching length beneath him, Danse too was pushed over the edge, clenching his jaw as he spurted all over his stomach and chest. He groaned out long and low, twitching beneath Nick as he pulled out his hand and held him in place.

They came back to themselves slowly, Nick reaching for a discarded rag to wipe Danse clean with while the ex-Paladin smoothed his hands over Nick’s thighs. Nick was the first to speak.

“So… you really are going to stay then?”

“Yeah,” Danse confirmed. “But you said-- I don’t understand what you meant, it was never about choosing.”

“Choosing a place to  _ stay _ , to _ live _ , that’s what my offer was about. Never about who you love more than the other, because it’s not that easy and I know it.” Nick tossed away the rag, and eased up and off of Danse, coming to sit off to the side in front of him. “You can’t control your heart that way. It just doesn’t work like that. And I know you’re  _ always  _ going to love Kori, probably more than me. I came to accept that a long time ago.”

The old Synth scratched inside of his neck, before speaking up again.

“And even then… if it came down to it, I wouldn’t make you choose. If you wanted to be with me  _ and  _ Kori, and Kori was okay with it, I wouldn’t mind one bit.”

Danse was truly startled now. “Are you… are you suggesting the possibility of a polyamorous relationship?”

“Yep.” Nick popped his lips on the last word as he started to button his shirt back up, and he tossed Danse his pants. “Even with lengthened lives like ours, life is too short not to try to indulge in ourselves and to be happy as often as we can. I mean, of course, this would likely only happen if you actually  _ talked  _ to Kori about the way you feel…”

At the mention of that, Danse narrowed his eyes, and set to work on making himself presentable again. “She deserves better than me, Nick. It’s obvious that I’m not someone she’s interested in romantically. I’m a valuable friend, sure, but--”

“Hell’s sake, Danse, just because there aren’t obvious signs doesn’t mean she’s not interested. She’s under a lot of stress right now, so she may come off as aggressive and uninterested. That’s just to be expected. You were the same way when you found out you were a Synth, I hope you know that.”

Danse’s movements slowed as he was pulling up his pants. “... no. I… hadn’t thought of that.”

Nick nodded sagely. “Fear and sadness makes monsters of us all. And right now, Kori has a lot to fear for. She has the fate of the world to fear for… the fate of her friends, and… herself.”

The ex-Paladin completely froze.

“If she thought today was going to be dangerous, Danse… the plunge into the Institute will make corpses of us all. And if there’s even a sliver of doubt in your mind about  _ not  _ telling Kori just how you feel… you may be running out of time to take that leap.”

Danse frowned, and sighed as he finished dressing himself.

“Why are you pushing for this?”

“Because I love you, Danse. And I hate seeing you in constant turmoil over this woman. She may return your affections. She may not. But either way, I think, from experience, that having closure on whether she feels the same or not would be better for you than never knowing at all. Not to mention, I’ve had a couple flings with the woman myself.”

_ That  _ came as a surprise to Danse, and he spun around to face Nick with wide eyes. “You’ve slept with Kori?”

“A few times, but A) that was all before she met you, B) it was mostly just for her comfort-- the woman functions better when she’s had an orgasm and has someone’s arms wrapped around her-- and C) the spark between us died out fairly quick. Not that anything was  _ wrong _ in the relationship, we just wore out our lust, I guess. I’d have no problem being in a relationship with you while you were with Kori, if she was up for it, because the spark of emotion I feel between you and me is  _ infinitely  _ more potent than what Kori and I went through. But if it came down to it, I’d want you to be with Kori, first before me.”

“That’s not fair to you, Nick. You confessed first.”

“But you’ve been in love with her the longest.”

“I may be new to this, Nick, but I _know_ that’s not how this works.”

Nick sighed, shaking his head slowly. “You can do better than an old bot like me, Danse. If Kori gives you the option and she wants nothing to do with me, I want you to choose her.”

Danse took a moment to process the new information given to him, brow furrowed and lips pursed. He opted to change the direction of the subject, uncertain what else to do about Nicks’ self-deprecating nature. “Do you think… you  _ could  _ ever feel the same way about her again? I’m not saying I  _ want  _ you to. I’m just curious.”

“I could. It is possible.” Nick nodded to himself. “But the first time around, it was more out of sympathy towards each other than any real attraction, and we didn’t realize it until about two months later. So we called it off, and shortly after, you showed up on my doorstep. I mean, I put two and two together pretty quick-- I’ve seen the way Kori looks at potential partners. But our break-up was completely mutual, so… I don’t see why we  _ couldn’t  _ try again, if the spark was there.”

Danse smiled a little, and turned around as he pulled his shirt on. “It would be interesting, I would think. The three of us.”

Nick chuckled, and synthetic arms wrapped around Danse’s shoulders, and a kiss was planted at the back of his head. “It could be. Though the only thing that comes to mind right now is the thought of both me and her teasing you relentlessly until you’re  _ begging.  _ But for now, I think you need some rest. I think we all do.”

“Come with me?” Danse’s voice was quiet, and timid. But Nick saw the pink on his ears, and knew that the thought that he’d planted in his brain was not an unwelcome one.

Nick kissed him again. “Of course, doll. Anything you want.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Woodkid-- "I Love You."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-nFIo4f71g)


	26. Chapter 26

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How do you write like you're running out of time, write day and night like you're running out of time, everyday you write like you're running out of time, like you're running out of time, are you running out of time..?

“Hey, General!”

Kori stopped mid-bite of her porridge, head jerking up at the grating rumble of Ronnie’s voice. She looked around for the woman, and Danse was just a touch too late to warn her that the Minuteman veteran was right behind her. The old woman clapped a hand down hard on Kori’s good shoulder, causing her to drop her spoon into her bowl.

“Preston was lookin’ for ya,” the woman informed Kori, a smirk on her face as she nodded her greeting to Danse across the table. “Seemed excited. Maybe the kid’s got some good news for once.”

“Thanks, Ronnie.” The vault dweller rolled her shoulder, wincing. “I’ll find him once I’ve finished eating.”

“You got it.” After giving Danse a thumbs up (damn woman had been bothering him about his crush for the past week now), she wandered off to attend to other duties.

“Ronnie Shaw is an… interesting character,” Danse commented, taking a bite of his own food.

“I mean, I guess when you’ve seen enough bloodshed, you develop a tough skin like that,” the vault dweller shrugged, cringing when her right shoulder protested. Danse shot her a sympathetic expression at the sight, frowning as his gaze also flitted over to the crutches propped against the table next to her. Once the pain had died, down, Kori returned to eating. 

“I suppose so,” he agreed quietly.

They sat together in silence or a while longer, before MacCready darted over and took a seat. His right arm was in a cast, only to help remind him not to move his shoulder, but he was still just as jittery and energetic.

“Hey, so you guys,” he started out, “you know how Hancock’s always got Jet on him, right? Well, Cait and I filled his next container with cinnamon powder. He’s gonna get a nasty fuckin’ surprise when he goes to take a huff!”

“What the fuck, Mac, you spiked Hancock’s jet?!” Kori’s eyes were as wide as saucers, before she broke into a crooked smirk. “Where is he? I gotta see this.”

“He’s gonna come over here,” MacCready promised, bouncing in his seat. As he bit into a Muttfruit, he pointed excitedly, and Danse turned around to face where he was pointing. “Look, look look look, hey Hancock!”

“Mornin’, kids,” the Ghoul grunted, coming to sit next to Danse. He clapped a hand on the ex-Paladin’s back, and Danse, in turn, grasped Hancock’s shoulder and gave it a gentle shake. “Mac, how’s the shoulder?”

“Could be worse, but I’m still not back up to par,” the sniper sighed, placing his head in his good hand. “I’m doing my best to keep from moving the bone, like Curie suggested, but it’s hard.”

“It’ll get there, kid, don’t worry. Kori? The leg?”

“Well, I’m not running around, that’s for sure.” She gestured to the crutches at her side. “But with the stimpacks, Curie’s thinking I’ll be back in service come next week. I hope she’s right-- this sitting around and waiting, it’s all been  _ agony _ .”

“Huh.” Hancock smirked, and reached into his coat pocket, pulling out a Jet inhaler. “Want a shot to take the edge off? Eh?”

Kori took a knowing look at the container, before smiling sweetly up at Hancock. “I’m good,” she said, taking another bite of porridge. “You’re more than welcome to indulge, however. We won’t stop you. But the last thing I need is a drug that _slows down_ time, when I'm trying to do everything I can to pass it by.”

“Eh, suit yourself.” The Ghoul shrugged, and placed the nozzle in his mouth. Upon inhaling the contents, however, his eyes widened, and he immediately began to choke. A puff of cinnamon escaped from his mouth, and MacCready howled with laughter, slamming his left hand down on the counter as he struggled for breath.

“Oh heck, oh  _ heeehehehehe _ …”

Danse took pity on the coughing Ghoul’s plight, and offered him his water. Hancock snatched the cup from Danse’s hands and took great big gulps. He ended up tilting his head so far back, he fell out of his seat, legs flying up into the air, which only made MacCready laugh harder. He wheezed with laughter, and Deacon walked up behind him, holding both shoulders gently to make certain he didn’t suffer the same fate as the Ghoul.

“Are we behaving, Joseph?” he asked in a sing-song voice, smirking as he looked down at the sniper.

“I-- I-- no, I-- when-- when am I--  _ ever!? _ ” Tears were streaming down his face at this point, and all Deacon did in response was pat his left shoulder as he himself chuckled.

Hancock pulled himself back up onto the table, all sneers and growls. “You are a dead man, Mac,” he warned, coughing the last of the cinnamon out of his lungs. “Just you wait. Oh, just you  _ wait _ .”

It was at this point that Kori stood, taking her bowl with her. She struggled with her crutches and the bowl, but managed to make it work, stubborn as she was. “Alright. I’m going to talk to Preston, figure out what’s up. Don’t you kids kill each other.”

“I can make no promises,” Deacon replied as the vault dweller walked away. Nick passed by her as she walked away, nodding a greeting towards her before giving Danse a look.  _ Have you told her? _

The sheepish look Danse graced him with was answer enough. The old Synth sighed as Piper rushed past him, coming to sit at the table where Kori had just left.

“Okay, so I need your guys’s opinion for a title for last week’s battle for my paper. What sounds better: ‘Victory and Independence at the Castle,’ or ‘The Institute: Not as infallible as previously believed’?”

“Those are all a bit wordy, Wright.” Nick took a drag of his cigarette, looking down at the papers she’d placed in front of her. “Why not something short and brief, like, ‘Victory against the Institute’? It’ll be catching enough I would think.”

“Yeah, I thought of that, but it needs to be  _ dramatic _ . It’s gotta have flare!”

Deacon folded his arms. “Try this one on for size, then: ‘Boogeyman loses to his own demons.’”

“Hmm, not bad, but too vague. Next idea?”

Danse furrowed his brow in thought. “... ‘War has changed… for good’?”

Piper went silent for a moment. “That’s… actually pretty good. It’s still vague, yeah, but we all know who we’re at war against. Most people will know straight away it has something to do with the Institute and want to know more. Yeah. Nice one, Danse. I gotta get back to the radio-- I’ve been chatting with Nat about it and she’s writing everything down for me.”

And with that, the reporter stood, and walked off across the courtyard once again. Hancock grunted, and slugged Danse in the arm.

“Since when were you so good with words?”

“I’m the walking dictionary, remember?”

“I think ‘thesaurus’ would be a more apt term,” Nick supplied, his gaze focused off elsewhere. Danse followed Nick’s line of vision, seeing that Kori was in deep conversation with Preston. He caught something about a reactor, and troops, before Elder Maxson joined them, and then they went too quiet for Danse to listen in anymore. He was pulled out of his staring by Hancock, anyways.

“So… hey, Danse… me and Mac, we’ve been talking… about, you know… what happened in Sanctuary--” The Ghoul scratched at the back of his neck awkwardly

“You don’t need to say anything,” Danse pleaded, feeling sick abruptly at the raising of the topic. “We all know I was stepping out of bounds, that I was at fault. Regardless of whether things were being kept from me or not, my reaction was uncalled for. I apologize. To both of you.”

MacCready and Hancock looked at each other, and they both cringed.

“Well… fuck.” Hancock rummaged around in his coat pocket, and placed something in Danse’s hand. “Now we actually feel bad about making this badge for you.”

Badge? Danse blinked, before looking at what had been placed in his hand. He stared at it for a moment, before he snorted, and burst into laughter.

“‘Award for largest stick shoved up someone’s ass.’ This is… you two put a lot of work into this. I’ll cherish it forever, thank you.”

Simultaneously, Deacon, MacCready, and Hancock’s jaws all dropped, before Mac laughed out loud.

“Was-- was that humor!? Paladin fucking Danse has a sense of humor?!”

“Way to take it lightly, pal,” Deacon praised him as Hancock hugged him, shaking him violently in ecstatic joy. Danse just laughed along with them as Preston and Kori walked over to the rest of the companions. Maxson trailed behind, and every inch of Danse still screamed at him to stand to attention, and then, to push Hancock off of him. Luckily, the Ghoul separated himself before the Elder came close.

“Good news,” Kori beamed. “Sturges radioed this morning. He’s found a way into the Institute. He’ll be here this evening to let us know what he’s come up with.”

Preston stepped forwards to supply more information. “Turns out all that info Kori brought back with her included maps of their whole underground complex. He found some old tunnel that’s still open to the surface-- cooling water for their reactor. I figure we can get in that way and secure the teleporter, then use it to bring in the rest of our troops. We fight our way to their reactor, fix it to blow, and get the hell out of there.”

Cait wandered over just as Preston was relaying this information. “Oh really? You figure we’ve got enough cannon fodder at this point?”

Preston narrowed his eyes at the crude wording, but answered her regardless. “Yes, I think we do now, with the Brotherhood’s assistance. Enough to fight our way to the reactor, which is all we need. We’ll all get together when Sturges shows up tonight to discuss a course of action.”

“I trust we’ll all come to an agreement on how best to proceed,” Arthur butt in. “In the meantime, I will brief my soldiers, bring the best of my best here for later debriefing.”

This time, when he parted, he didn’t even spare Danse a glance. Most of the other companions looked to each other with excitement, but Danse only felt dread, for reasons he couldn’t completely comprehend. Destroying the Institute was their primary mission, something he had been so prepared to do for the Brotherhood, but now, as he looked at Kori as she shifted with the crutches under her arms, he realized… Nick may have been right. He really may have been running out of time to confess his feelings.

 

* * *

 

Just as promised, Sturges arrived with a caravan of traders later that evening, exhausted but all grins and confidence, Kori herself greeted him, before leading him towards a group of tables that had been pushed together in a corner of the Castle grounds, so that as many people could sit as possible to listen in, including Kori’s closest companions.

“Hey, boss. Good news; found you a way into the Institute.”

“It’s hard to believe the Institute would leave another way in,” the vault dweller said, patting Sturges on the back as he laid out schematic after schematic.

“Yeah, well, it seems the Institute isn’t quite as self-contained as they’d like everyone to believe.” He pointed to a section of the Commonwealth just south of the CIT ruins, and as many leaned in as they could to take a look at it too, before relaying its location throughout the gathering. “Turns out, they’re still using an old water pipe that runs out to the river. Brings in cooling water to their reactor. Its entrance is underwater and is blocked by a security grate. Also the whole pipe is labeled ‘high radiation danger’. But there isn’t any other way in that I can find, so it’s this, or nothing.”

Kori hummed and groaned, all at the same time, but she leaned forwards all the same, planting her hands on the map. “How do I get past the security grate?”

“Oh, right.” Sturges dug around in his overalls pocket, before handing Kori a holotape. “I found the code that should open it, so all you have to do is survive the trip. Soon as you get in there, you need to access the main Relay control and use this holotape to teleport everybody into the Institute.”

“And that  _ includes  _ Brotherhood soldiers, yes?” Maxson arrogantly demanded to know, nostrils flared as he waited to be answered.

“We agreed to work together. Calm down, Arthur.” The vault dweller rolled her eyes when he made an indignant sound. “The Brotherhood will get their chance to shine, but you have to remember this is the Minutemen’s show now. They’re getting teleported in first, whether you like it or not, but yes. The Brotherhood will get in there, too.”

The Elder seemed satisfied with that response. He relaxed some, leaning back and narrowing his eyes.

“But as it is right now, I’ve still got a bum leg. As much as I would  _ love  _ go to charging into the Institute tomorrow at dawn’s first light, I’m in no condition to take the lead. We’ll take a week to prepare, and then we ride. No more waiting. No more excuses. The Institute is coming to an end.”  She looked up from the map to peer at both Preston and Maxson. “Anything to add? Either of you?”

Each of them shook their heads. Kori sighed, and stood up straighter.

“Meeting adjourned, I suppose. Do what you need. You’ve all got a week.”

Various Minutemen and Brotherhood soldiers all stood and dispersed, and several companions as well. Danse remained behind, staying seated at his table as he listened to the faction leaders argue.

“Paladin Farnsworth, I am aware that you are the Minuteman General, but as Elder of the Brotherhood of Steel, I am still worthy of respect!”

“I respect no man who tosses away his soldiers like garbage after years of unwavering service.”

“Is that what this is still about, then? This is all about Paladin Danse?”

“No, it’s also about all the innocent Ghouls too, asshole.”

"I would _never_ let any Ghoul serve under the Brotherhood name!"

"And that's exactly what the problem is--"  


“Hey,  _ hey, _ ” Preston cut in, barking. “Let’s take it easy. Differing as our views may be, we’ve still got a war to fight, and we can’t do that if we’re standing around fighting like children.”

“Preston, Maxson’s only  _ twenty _ . He is still a child in all but definition. He’s too used to being spoon-fed and needs to get his head out of his ass. Face it, Maxson-- history isn’t going to remember you for this one. Be a big boy about it.”

“If you hadn’t come in and sabotaged our work--”

“You wouldn’t have gotten as far as you did without me. Just because I had a change in allegiance doesn’t mean it’s my fault the Brotherhood failed to prepare enough for this fight against the Institute.”

The Elder bristled, but calmed himself as best as he could. “... You are correct. I should not have relied so heavily upon a single person for my organization’s success. But I care about my soldiers, Paladin. If it came down to sacrificing you or them, of course I would send you out, first. Not to mention, your expertise and insight on the Institute was too alluring for me to ignore.”

Dane clenched his jaw and his fists, but remain silent. Maxson's support was too important to snap at him.

Kori pursed her lips, and folded her arms. “I respect the Brotherhood of Steel, as a whole. But I will  _ not  _ respect you, or your policies. You are running a fantastic organization, all on your own, and at such a young age, too. But you have a lot to learn before you become the great leader I know you can be. The great leader people of  _ all  _ races can respect.”

Maxson said nothing. He only offered a stiff salute, before marching out of the Castle’s walls. Once he was out of earshot, only then did Preston speak freely.

“I think someone forgot to change his diaper,” he snorted. Kori snickered at him, and knocked off his heat from his head.

“Someone really fucked up his childhood for him, I’ll tell you that,” she sighed, grabbing her crutches. “Get some rest, Preston. I’ll have orders for you in the morning.”

Kori began making her way for her room, and smiled when Danse stood up from his place at the table. “Well? What do you think? Are you excited?”

The ex-Paladin folded his arms as he stared down at the vault dweller. “Partially. But, again, I’m worried you’re pushing yourself too hard. But that just makes me sound like a broken record, so… I’ll drop it there. Yes, I am eagerly anticipating our assault on the Institute, but not for the reasons I think you’re thinking.”

Kori frowned at that, shifting on her crutches and hissing. Danse’s expression softened.

“We can talk about this later,” he insisted. “You need rest.”

“I’m fine. Just need some more painkillers--”

“How about a massage instead?”

That caused Kori to shut up. She promptly closed her mouth, eyes wide, before nodding minutely. “That would be… appreciated.”

Danse chuckled a little, and gestured for her to lead the way.

They ended up in her bedroom a few minutes later, Kori on her belly and Danse rubbing into her stiff, sore muscles from behind. It was different from the time they’d spent in the Red Rocket participating in the same activity so many months ago. There were more scars on her back, and so many more knots. Each grunt was more pain than pleasure, but Danse didn’t relent, unless she begged him to. He hadn’t been anticipating anything intimate, but… he hadn’t been expecting hre stiffness to be  _ this _ bad.

“Do you want me to stop?” he asked once he’d gone over her entire back twice and she still had not completely relaxed.

“No, fuck… I need this.” Kori hissed it out through clenched teeth. “Unless you’re tired--”

“I can keep going,” Danse assured her, but his movements were slower. “Drink some water though, please.”

The vault dweller sighed, and grabbed her can of purified water, taking slow, careful sips. Danse heard the can crinkle under her tight grasp, and gently took it out of her hands when she was finished.

“Do you see why I worry?”

“I thought you said you were going to drop it.”

He sighed through his nose. “Right. Sorry.”

He worked her tense and aching back over two more times, before she had finally melted into the bed and was still, gasps silent and painful tensing dramatically decreased. Danse sat back on her thighs, rubbing his fingers of any soreness the hours of work may have caused.

“Please try to take it easy until we infiltrate the Institute,” he begged of her. “You’ve already done so much, and there’s so little left for you to do. Not to mention, with that leg, you shouldn’t be--”

“Danse, please,” Kori groaned, unmoving from where she lay completely naked. “You don’t have to mother me. God knows I got enough of that from Curie when I was bed-ridden earlier this week.”

Danse ran his knuckles down her spine, along the Deathclaw gashes and the burn scars and the bullet wounds.

“I could have lost you.”

The woman beneath him tensed.

“ _ We  _ could have lost you.”

There was silence. And then, there was a chuckle.

“It won’t matter what happens to me once the Institute is gone. This world… it will have nothing left to do with me.”

“That’s not true. You  _ know  _ that’s not true. The impact you hold runs deeper than just the Institute, now. And you need to stay alive.” Danse hid the tremble in his voice to the best of his ability. “If you think that I have purpose in this world regardless of my origins, you should think the same for yourself. And you’ve  _ made  _ purpose for yourself, through your friends, your allies, the people you’ve helped… you’re more important outside of just the Institute than I think you realize.”

“But that’s just the thing, Danse.” She wiggled her legs, and he got the hint and moved off of her. Kori rolled to her side, arms weak and shaking from the long massage, but she pushed herself into an upright sitting position. “I am important outside of the Institute, and I know that. But at the same time… things could go on okay without me once the Institute is gone. I've made sure of it. And that’s… that’s how I want it to be.”

“Kori--”

“Don’t-- don’t get the wrong idea, Danse, I’m not saying that’s the end of everything. I am saying… maybe… maybe you’ve got the right idea. About leaving the Commonwealth.”

Danse’s breath hitched.

“This place…” Kori shook her head. “The trip here, to the Castle… we passed by so many things I used to hold so dear. And now… it’s all rubble. I know I’d find only more of the same elsewhere in the world, but… I wouldn’t have the attachment there that I do here. It… it’d hurt a lot less. Maybe you’re right. Maybe being here is hurting us more than it’s fixing anything.”

The ex-Paladin shook his head gently, and placed his hands on Kori’s shoulders. “I was  _ wrong _ , Kori. I wanted to leave because things were--  _ are _ \-- dangerous for me here, as a Synth. It had nothing to do with the memories, so maybe I’m not the best person to convince you otherwise, but you helped me to realize that so long as there are people here who care about me, it’s worthwhile to stay. So long as I have friends, I’m safe here. And you’ll be safe, too.”

He brushed a stray strand of hair behind her ear, and had the passing thought that she would need a haircut soon, unless she meant to grow her hair out.

“I’ll keep you safe, Kori. So long as you stay here, I’ll protect you.”

She creased her brow. “You’ve… decided to stay? But the Brotherhood--”

“I’m not afraid of them so long as I have people who will stick by my side,” he informed her. “I fear Maxson’s wrath, still, but the Brotherhood itself… they won’t stick around long after the war ends, I don’t think. Not after you undermined their operations.”

She snorted and giggled lightly. “It was an honor to make those pompous bastards see the world doesn’t revolve around them.”

“I think you get too much enjoyment in knocking people down a few pegs.”

“Well, I’ve sure enjoyed doing it with you in our own way.” Kori purred. She placed a hand on Danse’s thigh, and he had to gulp before he could laugh.

“I think we’re getting a little off topic,” he reminded her, placing a hand on hers but not moving it yet.

“We don’t have to stay on topic.”

“Kori…” 

“Danse.” She batted her eyelashes at him innocently, and he hated that it almost worked on him. Almost. Danse sighed, and removed Kori’s hand from his thigh.

“I’m serious. I want to stay in the Commonwealth. And I want you to stay, as well, if you’re comfortable enough with it. I don’t mean to make any wild assumptions, but it almost seems like you’re making your decision to leave the Commonwealth based solely on my statement. I don’t know if you would have decided to leave with me, or if we would have gone separate ways, but regardless, I’m serious when I tell you that I’m not going anywhere anymore.”

The vault dweller again fell silent. Danse felt as if he could almost see her thoughts flashing across her mind, one thing at a time.

“... I was kind of hoping we’d go out together, but beyond leaving… I thought we’d end up splitting up, eventually. But if you’re really not going anywhere…”

His heart pounded in his chest at the implication that Kori would go where he went, and what it could possibly mean. He placed his hand on her thigh, a reversal of what had happened only moments ago.

“As much as I appreciate the sentiment, please don’t stay just for me,” he said quietly. “There’s Nick, Deacon, Preston… they all care about you, too. Don’t let my actions and decisions alone dictate your future. If you want to leave--”

“I wasn’t,” Kori said, hastily. “I just figured it’d be safer to leave together. Figure out what we want before parting ways. But you’ve got a point, about all of the connections I have here that  _ aren’t  _ pre-war. All my friends.”

She dropped her head.

“But I’m tired, too. Tired of being a leader for so many people. When this is all over… all I want is to rest. To settle down and just… live. I’m tired of struggling to survive. I just want to  _ live _ .”

“And you can,” Danse promised. “And you will.”

Kori fell to the side, until her head was on Danse’s chest. He wrapped his arms around her instinctively, running his fingers through her hair as she trembled.

They sat in silence for what felt like hours, but Danse watched the minutes tick away on Kori’s Pip-Boy on the desk next to the bed. When he thought she was asleep, she mumbled something incoherent.

“What was that?”

“I want you. I want to feel you. I just… I want a night to forget. Just for a while. Just you, and me. And anything our hearts desire.”

Danse bit his lip, before nodding. His heart begged to fly, to hold her and kiss her like the precious gemstone she was to him. But his mouth could not speak the words that ached inside of him, and all he could do was steady himself for the long night ahead.

“Anything you want. Always.”

 

* * *

 

Nick stamped out his light in the dirt at the diner just outside the castle, arching an eyebrow at Danse’s strange request.

“So let me make sure I heard you right. You want  _ me _ to  _ train  _ you how to be good with women socially? Danse… you’re not…  _ bad  _ at it. You’re not bad at all. I’ve seen the way you talk with Curie or Kori, or hell, even Cait. It’s all fine.”

“I know,” Danse sighed, pacing. “I know, but… I need to be better. And it’s not so much actually  _ talking  _ to Kori that has me so nervous. That’s fine. It’s that I’ve taken your advice to heart, and I’m ready to let her know how I feel.”

Nick arched an eyebrow. “But..?” 

“But I just… I can’t get myself to say the words, Nick. You know.  _ Those  _ three words. Everytime I think about it, or every time I try, I… I freeze up and change the topic to something else.”

Nick’s hard eyes softened. “You’re afraid of rejection, still.”

“I… suppose? I don’t know. Maybe it’s something that carried over from discovering my true identity. Maybe it’s something that won’t ever go away.”

“But you loved her even  _ before  _ you knew you were a Synth, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” Danse replied, “but I  _ did  _ plan on telling her how I felt before. But knowing that I wasn’t really human changed my outlook on the situation. Now I feel better about myself, but… that fear remains.”

Nick pushed himself off of the wall he was leaning against. “Well, first of all, if she’s going to reject you, it’s  _ not  _ going to be because you’re a Synth, so get that idea out of your head first before we talk about anything else. Second of all, we’ve only got three days until Kori heads into the Institute. You _really_ waited until the last minute, didn’t you?”

“Unfortunately,” Danse sighed.

Nick hummed, and began circling Danse. “Well, third on the list…”

He swatted Danse on the ass, and the ex-Paladin jumped and yelped in surprise.

“If she’s comfortable enough with you to ask to have a piece of this, then she’s the kind of person that will let you down lightly. Not to mention, everything you’ve been through, it’d be absolutely  _ evil  _ of her to make a fiasco out of it. If you get rejected, you have literally  _ nothing  _ to fear. Maybe she’ll call an end to the ‘friends with benefits’ deal, but she’ll still be your friend through it all, and if you _ really _ love her for who she is, you’ll be okay with losing out on the sex.”

“The sex really  _ is  _ just a nice bonus,” Danse agreed, cheeks light pink at the confession. “It’s more her company I appreciate.”

Nick only chuckled warmly, and patted Danse’s shoulder. “Good answer.” He stopped in front of Danse, hands behind his back. “You really wanna know how to go about this? You really wanna hear what I think you should do?”

“I do.”

Nick placed both of his hands on Danse’s shoulders, and looked him directly in the eyes.

“Just be honest. Take a deep breath, take a moment to think about what you want to say, and  _ how  _ you want to say it. It can even be as simple as, ‘Kori, I love you, and I want us to be together in a relationship.’ You don’t have to get flowery with your wording; she’ll appreciate the honesty more than anything else. And then, when it sounds good enough in your head… when you exhale, you speak.”

Danse nodded, hesitantly… before shaking his head instead. “I… don’t know if that will work.”

Nick frowned. “What do you mean? It’s literally foolproof.”

The ex-Paladin cringed, and ran two fingers along the scar of his left arm. “My confidence… it just plummets every time I try to talk about it. Sometimes even just  _ thinking _ about it makes me short of breath.”

“Okay, okay,” Nick nodded to himself, wrapping an arm around Danse’s shoulder and walking around the diner, for no other reason than to just walk. “Let’s think about this for a moment. Why do you lock up every time you try to tell Kori how you feel? Take a moment to dig deep, Danse.”

The ex-Paladin sighed, and stared down at his feet and Nick’s. “I… I honestly think it’s because even if she  _ does  _ accept my advances, I worry that, once she starts getting older and I stay the same… she’ll change her mind. And I’m afraid of that possibility, slim as it may be.”

“So even  _ you  _ admit that it’s a  _ slim _ chance Kori would push you away because she’s getting older and you’re perpetually in your late twenties. Not an absolute that she’ll say no, but a  _ slim _ chance.”

Danse pursed his lip. “... I suppose so, yes.”

“Well then why is it holding you back? It’s a  _ slim _ chance, but why would you deny yourself the chance to spend even just a  _ few _ years of happiness with the woman you love?”

“I don’t know. I never thought of it that way.”

Nick nodded, tapping his fingers on Danse’s shoulder. “And just having that answer, of whether she likes you in return or not… I’m telling you, stud, it’s going to be a big weight off of your shoulders, even if it’s not the answer you want to hear.”

“That’s the big problem though,” Danse finally confessed. “I don’t  _ know  _ which answer I want more.”

Nick let go of Danse, and came to stand in front of him, arms folded and looking unconvinced. “I think you do, Danse. I think you do know what you want to hear. If you didn’t know, or if you wanted to hear a negative response… we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

Danse’s shoulders drooped, and he glanced back towards the Castle.

“Honestly, Danse,” Nick sighed, “I don’t have anything I could teach you. You have the potential in you, and the words to make it happen. Right now, it all just boils down to taking the dive. And if you’re going to do it… you’re gonna have to act fast.”

The Synth and the ex-Paladin stood side by side, staring up to the Castle as dusk began to fall, the sun casting a glow on the concrete bricks. On the Castle walls, the vault dweller herself emerged, standing proud despite her crutches, and staring to the west, over the vast Commonwealth and the setting sun. Danse could only wonder, as he stared at her, who could have stolen this phoenix’s wings and trapped her on this earth with such lowly creatures like himself.

 

* * *

 

Three days passed. Three days passed, and Danse said nothing of his feelings for the vault dweller. Try as he may, he could not find the courage in himself to speak his mind. So, instead, he focused on what he currently had with Kori. Together, he and Kori laughed. Together, they planned. They trained for the journey to come. They celebrated the removal of her cast, and he aided her in getting accustomed to moving around on her leg again. She leaned heavily against him, and every stumble was a shared giggle. They ate, they slept. And all the while, Danse stayed quiet.

He came close, once. The second night, when they were watching the sun set over the Commonwealth. They sat side by side, shoulder to shoulder, and he was mesmerized by the way her skin seemed to glow in contrast to the orange sky. He swore to Nick the only thing that stopped him from taking advantage of the perfect moment was Elder Maxson calling her aside to debrief some new soldiers he’d assigned for the infiltration team. He’d glared at Danse until the vault dweller was heading down the rubble slope, before turning around and leaving himself.

Ever since then, he’d kept to himself about it. He was almost completely resigned to simply letting things stay quiet, and hoping that everything went smoothly with their infiltration of the Institute. Maybe afterwards, he’d finally have the courage to say what needed to be said. Hopefully, it wouldn’t be too late.

The evening before they were set to infiltrate the Institute, Danse sat at the back end of the Castle, on the rocks and watching the waves of the ocean ebb and flow. Nick sat by his side, rubbing consoling, understanding circles into his back. They were both silent, not because they didn’t want to speak, but because there was no need to. There was simply nothing that required saying. The silence was their comfort in the wake of the storm of tomorrow.

Danse had his head in his hand, eyes lidded at the soothing motion of the Synth’s hand on his back. Even the cooling fan somewhere in that old Synth’s system had become a calming thing, in quiet moments like this. Nick was sure that, if Danse were a cat, he would be purring.

“You’ll be safe tomorrow?” Nick asked suddenly, breaking the quiet monotony of the ocean.

“Will you?”

“You say it like it’s an ultimatum.”

“You say it like I wasn’t planning to take care of myself in the first place.”

Nick snorted. “I know you can take care of yourself. But I’ve also seen you throw yourself into danger for others. It’s what drew me to you, initially, that selflessness, but in a situation like the one we’ll be faced with tomorrow… it’s not going to be worth it.”

Danse was too relaxed to have any physical reactions to Nick’s statement, but he spoke clearly. “I’m going to be careful. Protect people without putting myself in danger, but if it’s you or Kori, I can’t make any promises. I care too much about the both of you to let you get hurt.”

“I… don’t approve, but that’s fair. Just so long as you’re not sticking out a leg for every single soldier that goes in there, I’ll be content with that. You’re too important to me for me to lose you like that, selfish as it may sound.”

Danse looked up and over at Nick, and the melancholy and reflective expression on his face.

“I lost Jenny too soon. Too tragically. Please… don’t make me go through that with you.”

“Nick…” Danse leaned back, taking a hold of the android’s face in one hand. “Are you frightened for tomorrow?”

“Terrified,” he confessed. “Absolutely terrified.” Nick leaned into Danse’s touch, and his eyes fluttered shut. “I know I’m not the only one, and I’m sure you’ve got your own fair share of nerves… but I just… I don’t know, Danse. I’ve just got a bad feeling.”

“We’re heading into the unknown,” Danse reminded him. “That’s reasonable. We don’t know what exactly we’ll be facing, and it’s okay to be scared about that.”

“I’ve been into the unknown plenty of times before. Remember, I woke up in a body that wasn’t my own in an apocalyptic wasteland. That was like finding yourself in a permanent nightmare, and though it was a shit situation, I managed. But this… this is different.”

Danse furrowed his brow, but the two of them were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Danse let go of Nick’s face to turn around towards the source of the sound. There was Kori, carefully picking her way over the rocks in order to come sit next to Danse. She stumbled and nearly fell over into the ocean, but managed to keep her footing.

“Hey, guys,” she said quietly, and the two of them returned her greeting in the same way. Kori took a seat next to Danse, stretched out her leg, and sighed. “Needed a breather from Maxson’s bullshit. He’s got his nose shoved too far up everybody else’s shit.”

“It’s how he’s always been, unfortunately,” Danse sighed. “I knew it was a flaw of his even when I was still Paladin.”

“Well, good to know you weren’t  _ completely  _ blind to his bullshit.” Kori closed her eyes, and sighed. “So here’s the plan, just so you guys don’t have to come to the meeting tonight. Early in the morning, I’m going to get up and head out for the Institute myself. I’ll teleport you guys in with everyone else at about noon, or at least, I’m hoping it’ll be around that time. It’s what Sturges estimated, but it could take longer.”

“Are you sure you’ll be able to do it alone?” Danse asked, worry creasing his brow. “I have no problem with escorting you--”

“Danse, the last thing I’m going to do is make you trudge through  _ another _ highly irradiated zone.” Kori let her head roll back, staring up at the sky. “I can handle it. I’ve traveled alone in the past. Sturges tells me the worst I’ll likely be facing down there is a bunch of Feral Ghouls.”

“As much as I hate traversing dangerous radiation, I abhor the idea of you doing it alone even more,” the ex-Paladin insisted, leaning forwards so that he could be in her direct line of sight when she looked forwards again.

“Danse’s got a point,” Nick added. “Gotta have some backup in case things go south.”

Kori pursed her lips, before sighing and dropping her head.

“It’ll all be over, soon,” she said aloud, though it seemed to be more for her own benefit than anything else. “And then I won’t have to ask these things of you anymore.”

“Hey… I do it because I want to. I want you to be safe, Kori. We all do.” Danse placed a hand on her back reassuringly. “Let me come with you. Please. I can have someone bring in my Power Armor for me when everyone else teleports in. I can handle this.”

“Never thought you couldn’t.” Kori smiled something broken, before opening her eyes and looking over at Danse. “Okay. You can come. I’ll scavenge a few more Radaway packs.”

Danse sighed with relief, leaning back to a comfortable position. “Thank you, Kori. I won’t let you down.”

“You never have before, in situations like this.” The vault dweller rested her arms on her knees, watching the waves crash on the rocks before them. The three of them sat in comfortable silence, for a while, before the woman spoke up again. Her voice was distant and longing.

“... you know… I never managed to ever leave America before the Great War. I’ll probably never get the chance now.”

Danse and Nick exchanged a glance, before the old Synth leaned over to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, reaching around Danse to do so. “You’d just find more of the same as here. It wouldn’t be the romantic adventure you probably dreamt of anymore. But I mean… if you really wanted to leave the country, there’s always still Mexico. I hear the coastal lines are really nice this time of year. Not this cold bog Boston’s always been.”

She chuckled lightly. “Nah. It was just a passing thought. I know it’s not realistic.”

The waves sprayed over them. None of them flinched.

“Maybe in another life, I guess.”

Nick grunted in agreement, before adding, “I hope we get to be a part of it.”

There was a pause amongst them all. In their speech. In the wind. The waves. The very rotation of the earth.

“I’d like that.”


	27. Chapter 27

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, this note is all seriousness and no fun, and I apologize for that in advance, but I'm in a real pickle right now. Things are getting pretty bad in my home-- I've been living in an abusive and toxic situation my whole life, but it's getting progressively worse.
> 
>  
> 
> **This has been edited due to realizing you shouldn't really link anything financial-related. So instead, I'll just leave this link here and be quiet:<http://dylawa.tumblr.com/writing-requests>**
> 
>  
> 
> ... so if you enjoy my writing and/or would like to check out my art, please do so, and any and all requests are highly appreciated.

The sun had not yet risen when Danse was being roused from his slumber. He groaned, and turned his face into the pillow beneath him, but was only shaken more vigorously as a result.

“Hey. Come on. You said you wanted to do this with me. Now’s the time. We’ve got to go. The Institute will  _ not  _ wait, or stop the sun from rising.”

That caused him to jolt upright. He blinked blearily as a pile of clothes were tossed on his head, and he groggily took a hold of the shirt. When his vision cleared and he didn’t have clothes obscuring his vision, he saw Kori before him, already dressed and setting about fitting herself with armor. On the desk were several of her weapons, still waiting to be packed away for later use, along with some breakfast.

“How long have you been awake?” Danse asked, looking over at her Pip-Boy still on the desk for the time.

“Ten minutes, don’t worry about it.” Kori slipped into her chestpiece and started fiddling with the straps. “I’ve got some spare armor you can borrow since you aren’t using your Power Armor for now. Get dressed, we can eat on the way.”

Danse frowned at the terseness of her voice, rubbing at the back of his neck before setting about the task. A no fun-all business Kori was never a good sign, but he supposed, given the circumstances, it made sense. They were about to attempt the impossible: getting into the Institute without the use of teleportation. They were going to penetrate the impenetrable. She had to have her mind on the task at hand, and he wasn’t going to interfere with that.

“Ad Victoriam,” Danse grunted as he pulled on his pants.

“Ad Vita,” Kori responded.

With just the two of them traveling together, and Danse uninhibited by Power Armor like usual, they made good time, and it was just the crack of dawn when they arrived at the location marked on Kori’s Pip-Boy map. The ruins of the CIT lay just up the river, and they slowed to a halt at the sight of it. A shiver passed through Kori as they stared together.

“Are you alright?”

Kori bit her lip as she stared towards the ruined college.

“... we’re about to make a radioactive crater in the middle of the Commonwealth. I’ve got some… mixed feelings about that. Whether it’s for the greater good or not, we’re still going to hurt innocent people by doing this. And I’m not just talking Institute bystanders.”

The ex-Paladin sighed through his nose, realizing she was correct, and he patted her back. “I’m sure the Commonwealth will forgive you for any fallout this may cause. They’ll know what this means. Besides, it’s not like we’re not all slightly irradiated anyways.”

Kori only sighed in resignation despite his attempt to comfort her, stepping away from Danse and towards the river. “Well, we either take the plunge now or never. Got your Radaway?”

“Got it.” Danse moved to stand beside her, staring down into the murky water.

He wasn’t expecting Kori to take a hold of his hand, and by the time it had registered that she had, she was already jumping in. Danse only had a split second to take a deep breath and to jump after her, before he would have been dragged in.

It took a second for his vision to adjust under the surface, but when it did, he spotted Kori already swimming towards a drainage pipe a few feet away. With a great kick of his legs and a wave of his arms, he set off to follow, wiggling through seaweed and trash. Luckily, it was a straight shot through, without any alternate paths, so Danse wasn’t on the verge of blacking out from a lack of oxygen when he broke the surface inside.

Kori was still two steps ahead of him, staring at a keypad that was very out of place on the wall. When Danse went to join her on land, she stopped him with a wave of her hand. “You’ll just be getting back in,” she called behind her. She fumbled around in her pockets, before procuring a wet paper. After staring at it, she typed in the code on the keypad, and sure enough, a grate to the ex-Paladin’s left swung open. His body began drifting towards it of his own accord.

“Strong current leading in there,” Danse warned her.“There may be a drop.”

Kori slid back into the water next to him and treaded water as they were pulled ever closer. “Well, here’s hoping we don’t get trapped underwater somewhere then.”

“I thought you knew the layout of these caverns!”

Kori snorted. “I do, I was fucking with you.”

She swam past him before he could get a good swipe at her, and before Danse knew it, she was yelping as she slipped over some sort of edge. It wasn’t long before he heard a splash, and he knew that the drop wasn’t far.

“One of these days,” he muttered to himself, “you’re going to jump in head-first, and then you’re going to  _ lose  _ your head, and I’ll be there to put it back on for you, just like always… ”

When Danse took the same plummet and landed in the same pool of water, he grunted when his butt hit the ground beneath the surface. It didn’t hurt, but it was unexpected. Upon surfacing, Kori offered him her hand from the edge, and he took it and she hoisted him up.

“No going back now.”

Danse looked up at where they had fallen from, and agreed silently. There was little chance they’d be able to get back up that way. The only direction they could take now was forwards and onwards.

“Come on,” Kori urged him. She was already heading down the tunnel ahead of them, and she gestured him with a quick wave of her hand. Danse fell in line, and he looked around them warily. Anything could happen in here; Ghouls were the primary concern, but one could never be too careful.

As the only thing they encountered for quite some time were turrets (Institute grade-- they were definitely in the right place) and mole rats, Danse was left to think, and his thoughts poisoned him with guilt. The last three days, he hadn’t told Kori about his true emotions, and he’d been initially okay with that, but now, as the end drew closer and closer, he could only feel disappointment with himself. Disappointment, and a subtle fear that, because of their odds of being severely wounded, or worse, he had only one last chance. He was reasonable enough to know that now wasn’t the best time to speak up. But he also was smart enough to realize, it may be the only chance he had left.

“If… you’re able, and willing,” he started out, “there’s a personal matter that’s been plaguing me that I’d like to discuss, while things are still calm.”

Kori looked back at Danse with a slight frown, before continuing onwards. “Okay, I’m listening,” she informed him as she slid open a hatch to a pipe they were in and stepping out.

Danse took a deep breath.

“I feel like I owe you an apology. The way I behaved upon discovering my true identity was… immature, and volatile. I thought that I was unlovable. That I wasn’t worthy of friendship or affection because my life had been a lie, and not just to me. Even if it wasn’t something I had intended, the fact of the matter was I gave people a false image of who I was, and that included you.”

Kori opened a door, and peered over the railing to the water below, before walking to the stairs that lead down into it. As she did so, however, she glanced back at Danse again. “Are you okay, Danse?”

His mouth flapped, before he shook his head and sighed. “I’m sorry. I thought this would be easier to talk about. There’s so much I wanted to say, but I don’t know where to start.”

“Take a deep breath,” Kori informed him as they waded into the water, “and start from the beginning.”

“I’ll try.”

Danse closed his eyes, carefully picking his steps forwards. ‘ _ Just spit it out. Nick said it doesn’t have to be flowery, and this isn’t the kind of place for flowery. Just tell her, I am romantically attracted to you. It’s simple. Speak up! _ ’

“When we first met, at Cambridge, the first thing I noticed about you was how you dove into things head first, blindly. I doubt you actually took into account just how many Ferals my team and I were facing before you jumped in to help. I’m not criticizing you for it-- I would likely be dead if you hadn’t-- I’m just saying it was what struck me first.”

They were interrupted by a couple Ghouls popping out at them, but the monsters were nothing more than corpses a short few seconds later with their combined efforts. Kori motioned for Danse to continue.

“As I was saying, your lack of hesitation struck me as odd. Most people I’d ever met in my life always took the time to consider the weight of their actions, or what could result from intervening in something out of their domain. But you didn’t do that. You saw that I was in dire need of assistance, and you aided without questioning whether it was the smart thing to do, without regard for your own safety, and without even knowing who I was.”

“Guy in Power Armor in front of a Police Station defending his wounded. Didn’t seem like a dangerous sort of person to me.” Kori shrugged it off as if it was nothing.

“Still, it meant a lot to me. It  _ still  _ means a lot to me. And it was the start of something incredible. Something that lead us to where we are now. But there’s also been a lot of pain, for both of us. Revelations we never wanted to discover, things we never wanted to know about ourselves.”

Kori stopped, suddenly, and turned around to face Danse. “No one ever wants to know about the darker parts of themselves. And when they do find out those things, they try to push them back down without really analyzing what it all means.  _ Why  _ we discovered those unsavory secrets in the first place. Yeah, these are all things we didn’t want, but they’re a part of who we are now. And instead of shoving them aside… we have to try to embrace them, so that we can be better. Like you’ve been doing, in regards to your identity.”

Danse frowned. This conversation wasn’t going where he wanted it to. He thought for a moment about how to put it back on track.

“I suppose you’re right. Maybe I’m just missing the point. My life’s starting over, and I need to come to terms with everything I’ve lost and everything I’ve gained. After I met you, my life changed for the better, and when my true identity was revealed, you still treated me with dignity and respect. That’s the nature of true friendship, and I’m forever in your debt. This all relates to something important you’ve made me realize. I don’t know if it’s friendship, or an anomaly in my programming. After all, I’m not really human. But whatever it is, I can’t deny that I’m feeling closer to you than anyone else I’ve ever met.”

Kori tilted her head back towards Danse and smirked. “Hmm. Even more than Nick?”

Danse sputtered a little at that. Despite how his throat tightened and fought against him, he said the words he felt Nick would have wanted him to say. “Nick is… an admirable friend and companion, but… well, it’s just… not the same, as how it’s been with you.”

Kori stopped again. A contemplative expression crossed her features, and Danse waited with baited breath.

“I… feel the same way. You’re probably the greatest friend I’ve ever had. And you’re right; we’ve faced a lot together. I’m glad you decided to stay in the Commonwealth. You’re… you’re important to me. My best friend.”

Danse gulped as his heart fell from his throat, and settled just above his stomach and ceased to pound so anxiously. So it wasn’t mutual, then. She still only saw them as friends. Well… at least now he knew, he supposed. It was for the better. It would have to be. He gathered himself as they approached a terminal and a locked door.

“Look, I know that this has been difficult for you. In fact, I don’t envy some of the recent decisions you’ve had to make. If our roles had been reversed, I’m not so sure I could have handled it as well as you did. Whatever the case may be, I just want to thank you for sticking by me, and remind you that what I said before still stands. If you need me, I’ll be here for you.”

Once the door was open, Kori turned back to look at him. That radiant beaming smile hurt him now more than ever, like staring at the sun.

“I know you will be,” she said, and she placed a confident hand on his shoulder. “You always have been. I promise the same for you, Danse.”

They slipped into the room together, and silence fell over them again. Inside, they encountered a few Synths, but nothing they couldn’t tackle together. After, they found a pipe, well maintained, and they knew. They’d made it. This was the way into the Institute.

It was just a short walk through it inside, and the first thing Danse was struck by was, even if it was a neglected little corner, it was still so… clean. Clean, and white. Even the air, when he took a deep breath, was pure. He was bitter as he realized that his time in the Institute would be some of the cleanest air he would ever breathe, but there wasn’t time to sulk about it. Kori was already shaking the water out of her boots, before rounding the corner to a console. As she fished out the holotape Sturges had provided her with, Danse peered over the console into the room ahead. It was circular, filled with lights and lasers, and he was taken off guard by it.

“May wanna step back, Danse,” the vault dweller warned.

As he did so, crash after crash of thunder and lightning rocked the room before them. Minutemen and Brotherhood soldiers alike flooded out, before Sturges, and then, Preston and Maxson themselves.

“Excellent work, Paladin,” Maxson praised her, pointedly ignoring Danse’s presence and contribution. “Everything is proceeding as planned. Our next target is the reactor. If anything tries to slow us down, I’m ordering you to destroy it. Man  _ or  _ machine.”

Preston had been too involved in spinning in circles, taking everything in, before he bumped into Kori. He composed himself quickly, clearing his throat as he handed her a small device. “You’re gonna need this. It’s a fusion pulse charge. Once it’s attached to the reactor, it can be detonated remotely. You get that on the reactor, and we can trigger an explosion that should destroy  _ everything  _ the Institute has ever built. Just make sure we give the civilians a chance to escape before we blow the place. We’re not here to commit mass murder.”

Elder Maxson looked indignant at that. “Civilian or not, everyone who lives in the Institute has been paramount in their work to some degree. There are no  _ innocents  _ here.”

“That’s not your decision to make,” the vault dweller growled. “They didn’t ask to be born into this, and it’s all they know. In definition, they’re innocent, and I’m going to make sure they can get out and away before we blow this place.”

“Sturges!” Preston called, leaving the conversation between the two. “You better get to work on that teleporter of theirs. We need that thing running as soon as possible. You pull us back up as soon as we give the signal. And anyone from the Institute who wants out, you let ‘em go so long as they aren’t shooting you.”

“You got it, Boss.” Sturges gave a thumbs up, and got to work on figuring out the console before him.

By that time, all of Kori’s companions had arrived via the teleporter. Nick gave a relieved sigh upon seeing Danse, and Danse to Nick. The Minuteman Danse had assigned to bring his Power Armor approached, and the two swapped out. The ex-Paladin settled comfortably in his armor, ready for the fight to come. The three of them-- Danse, Kori, and Nick-- gathered around.

“Stick as close to each other as you can, and keep each other safe,” Kori instructed them, “we’ll try to be in and out. I don’t want to have to be here any longer than necessary.”

“Agreed,” the old Synth said, shuddering as he looked around. “Something about all this shiny chrome and blinding white is more unsettling than the darkest places of the Commonwealth.”

“You haven’t seen anything yet,” Kori warned. Then, she raised her voice, to all the soldiers and companions. “Okay, listen up. In and out. That’s the plan. Try to keep casualties to a minimum, keep each other alive. Brotherhood, you’re to play nice with  _ everyone _ . Ghouls and Synths alike, just for today. We can’t do this unless we work together unconditionally. Minutemen, keep the Brotherhood well stocked on ammunition and stims, they’re probably going to be our heavies, they’re going to be taking the brunt of a lot of the damage. Follow me.”

Danse nodded in agreement himself, and moved to follow, but a rough hand at his shoulder stopped him. He turned around to face who was holding him back, and blinked in shock as Elder Maxson’s face greeted him.

“Keep out of my way,” he warned, lips curling up in a snarl. “I won’t actively go out of my way to harm you, but if you  _ do  _ cross my line of fire, I will  _ not  _ hesitate. Understood?”

Danse narrowed his eyes, and slapped Maxson’s hand off of him.

“Thanks for the warning, Arthur,” he replied coldly, before hurrying to follow Kori. The Brotherhood leader hoisted up his minigun and barked for his men to fall in line.

A short while later, the small army found themselves emerging from an abandoned section of the Institute into what Kori informed them was the Bioscience division. There was no reason to inform everyone to stay quiet-- a group as massive as they couldn’t possibly hope to really take the scientists by surprise.

“If they shoot at you,” she ordered as they headed down the stairs, “shoot back. If they’re running, leave them be. Go for it!”

She herself lead the charge, jumping out of the stairwell and shooting an armed scientist before he could draw his weapon. Cait, Maxson, and Deacon rushed in after her, and then all Danse and a few others could do was rush out and then press themselves against a wall and hope they didn’t get trampled by overeager revolutionists. Danse watched on as their ragtag army flooded into the Institute, little by little. Some were already falling victim to any weapons the Institute scientists happened to have on hand. Across the way from Danse, a mechanical voice hummed with worry.

“‘There are two problems for our species' survival-- nuclear war and environmental catastrophe-- and we're hurtling towards them. Knowingly.’”

Danse looked over to Nick, who was in the same predicament he was as soldier after soldier piled out from the narrow hallway, forging the way ahead in the beginning of this great battle. The old bot licked his lips, staring around him in horror as bodies were already beginning to drop.

“Nick,” Danse called, moving to stand in front of him. “Nick, keep it together. I’m right here, right by your side. We’re going to make it through this, together. Let’s keep a tight formation in here. I don’t want to lose you to something I can’t see.””

Wordlessly, Nick nodded, and the deer-in-the-headlights look faded a little bit. “Yeah. Okay. Stick close to me.”

Danse nodded in return, and they left to join those that had already worked their way out of the Bioscience division. They helped those who were struggling to keep themselves alive along the way, and Curie worked side by side with the Brotherhood medics to keep people in the fight. Nick gave her a pat on the back as they passed her by.

“Kori sure doesn’t wait for anything, does she?” Nick said, barely even panting.

“She wants in and out,” Danse reminded him. “It’s likely that being here is causing her a great deal of discomfort.”

“Yeah…” Nick trailed off as they emerged into the heart of the Institute, eyes wide and jaw agape. There was an elevator at the middle of the room, and flowing water ran to the center, crisp and pure. Trees surrounded the outskirts, and there were balconies with chairs-- likely places of residence-- that overlooked it all.

Even Danse had to admit the sight was impressive, but he only had a moment to admire it. There was a shot directly at the chest of his Power Armor, and he grunted as he stumbled back with the force of it.

“Nick, get behind me!” Danse commanded, hoisting up his laser rifle before marching into the battle.

By the time the onslaught of enemies and Synths slowed, several companions were out for the count. Deacon had suffered a shot in the gut, which would not be fatal, but he was no longer in fighting condition. Cait’s arm was broken, making it impossible for her to use her shotgun, but she was undeterred, yanking out a bat to use instead. Piper, as well, had suffered a concussion, and was currently huddled up next to Deacon in a far corner attempting to get her sight back while Curie tended to them.

Kori, Danse, and Nick all fought side by side, eliminating Coursers and Synths alike. Just when they seemed to be surrounded on all sides, there was a war cry, and a volley of lasers shredded through half of them like paper. The three of them yanked their gaze to the top of one set of stairs to see Elder Maxson, pure bloodlust and rage in his eyes as he fired his minigun like a madman.

When everyone had a moment to breathe, the intercom system crackled to life.

“Hey there, General!” came the ever chipper voice of Sturges. “Found the reactor. Looks like you need to get yourself to the Advanced Systems area. Only… well, it’s locked. Can’t override it from here. Looks like the command can only come from the Director’s personal terminal. You’re gonna need to get access to it somehow.”

Kori tensed as next to them, the elevator opened. Danse watched as the expression on her face shifted from deep concentration to abject dread. She shook her head, and took a hesitant step back, to which Danse stopped her with a gentle hand. The look she gave him in response,he knew, was a silent plea that needed no translation. ‘ _ Don’t let me go alone _ .’

After a moment’s consideration, Danse stepped out of his Power Armor. “I’ll go with her,” he said to Nick, gesturing to his abandoned suit. “Get inside. It’ll keep you safe.”

Nick looked ready to protest, but he took a look between the two of them-- first at Kori, and then at Danse-- before he sighed through his nose.

“Right. I’m… sure you’ve got some questions you want answered, anyways.” The Synth circled around and clambered into Danse’s Power Armor, before nodding down at them. “We’ll hold the fort down here. Be safe, both of you. Who knows what they’re guarding Shaun with.”

“That’s not what I’m afraid of,” Kori gulped, staring up the elevator.

Danse and Nick exchanged one last glance, before the ex-Paladin placed his hand at the small of her back, and the two of them stepped inside. Danse pushed the button, holding his weapon close to himself. Kori, on the other hand, had hers down by her side. She was unusually stiff, and Danse could see by the clench of her jaw that she was barely keeping herself together as they made their way through the halls beneath.

When they stepped inside the next elevator that would take them back up to what Danse could only assume was the Director’s office, he looked over to see Kori shaking.

This time, he didn’t deny himself when he pulled her in for a side hug. He held her shaking body close to his without fear of being pushed away, without wondering if she would take it the wrong way. At this point, it didn’t matter anymore. And he knew that it had been the right thing to do when she leaned her head into his chest.

“Whatever happens,” she whispers, “whether he’s up there or not… don’t tell anyone what happens. This is strictly between us.”

“Don’t worry,” Danse assured her, finally beginning to feel anxious about the whole thing himself. “Don’t worry. I won’t say a word. Say what you need to say.”

The elevator doors opened. Kori and Danse parted from their embrace, and moved on.

When they reached a set of stairs, Kori’s steps stumbled, but she took a deep breath, and began the climb. Danse stayed close behind her, weapon raised and ready to fire at the first sign of trouble. But there was no interference, there was no gunfire. What Danse  _ did  _ hear was a distant beeping. Like a heart monitor. As they reached the top of the stairs, Kori’s gaze moved to her right, and Danse’s did as well. The sight that met him was… pitiful.

He knew, without asking, who the old man in the bed was. The walnut tone of his skin was unmistakable, though his features likely mirrored that of his father more than his mother. Slowly, the old man turned his head at the sound of approaching footsteps, and his gaze fixed itself on Kori. Danse did his best to remain emotionless, even as the old man wrinkled his large, flat nose in clear distaste at the both of them.

“I didn’t expect to see you again,” he sighed, slow and tired. “Come to see the reactor, have you? We got it working without you.”

Kori came to stand at the side of the bed. Her expression was unreadable, something that could not be translated, but what Danse did pick up on through the fog of it all was “cold.” Just cold. “I’m sorry it’s come to this, Shaun.”

The old man wrinkled his brow, next. “You’re sorry. You can’t be  _ that  _ sorry if you’re here going through with it. It’s not enough that I lay here… dying… Now you plan on what, destroying everything? Tell me, then. Under what righteous pretense have you justified this atrocity?”

Danse clenched his fists and his jaw as Kori explained herself briefly.

“It’s for the greater good. The Commonwealth deserves to determine its own fate. The amount of power you hold doesn’t give  _ you  _ the right to say that the world above is a world without hope. And they all up there have made the decision, as a whole, that the Institute has terrorized them for long enough. Sadly, Shaun, I’m inclined to agree. I’ve beared witness to the things you have done to these people, and I say ‘no more’.”

“Spare me,” Shaun groaned. “You’ve spent time up there. You know as well as I that it’s doomed.”

There was a pause, and then a sigh.

“Well, none of it matters, now, I suppose. You’ll accomplish your task, and ruin humanity’s best hope for the future. The only question I have left, then, is why you’re standing here. Is it regret, or did you just come to gloat?”

Kori knelt by the side of the bed, so that she was eye level with Shaun.

“Shaun. If you help me, fewer people will die. Will you?”

“Why would I  _ ever  _ consider helping  _ you _ ,” the old man spat, narrowing his eyes.

Kori frowned, On of her hands reached up to take a hold of his, but she stopped herself, clenching her fist against her chest. Her breath shook as she tried to keep her composure. “Help me, and we can try and minimize the casualties in all this,” she begged. “You want your people to survive, don’t you?”

Shaun rolled his head to one sighed, and let loose a suffering, defeated sigh.

“Very well. The terminal behind me… enter access code 9003. That will disable some of the Synths. Now  _ go _ . Just… leave me.”

The wounded look on Kori’s face, though she tried to hide it, made Danse’s heart ache. She shook her head as Shaun continued to breathe harshly, stressed and anxious.

“Are you in any pain?”

“Yes, of course. But that will end soon enough, won’t it? All thanks to you… you’ve doomed humanity. You know that?”

“Shaun… I’m sorry it’s come to this.”

“It’s too late to be sorry.”

“... yes. It is. For both of us.”

Only then did Kori stand. She glanced at Danse, before making her way over to the terminal a few feet away. Instead of joining her, Danse took her place at Shaun’s side. The Institute leader furrowed his brow in confusion.

“And… who might you be?”

Danse did everything in his power to quell down the boiling anger rising inside of him. This man was weak. Frail. To be angry with a dying man would do neither of them any good. To be violent would be despicable.

“You created me,” Danse informed him simply.

Realization dawned on Shaun’s face. “Ah… so you’re one of those so-called ‘free thinking’ Synths, then.”

“Designation M7-97. Yes.” Danse crouched down next to Shaun. “If you’d be so kind to indulge me… I have some questions. About who I was, if you know. The Railroad wiped any memory I may have had of this place and my duty here.”

Shaun’s features softened.

“I believe… I do remember you, actually. I think… you were a test subject. In Bioscience. The only reason I truly remember you, however, is you requested to be made a Courser, rather than us finding you suitable and extending the offer ourselves. It was dangerous… and the Synth Retention Bureau admired that.”

“Why would  _ I  _ want to be a Courser?”

“We didn’t ask you, at first. After all, it was likely you would drop out of the program a few days after joining, due to its strenuous and unforgiving nature. It was only when, despite the excruciating pain you felt, you chose to remain that we inquired. You answer was… frivolous. Stupid.”

Danse narrowed his eyes. “And that answer would be..?”

Shaun closed his eyes, and chuckled.

“You wanted to see the sun.”

The ex-Paladin’s throat felt tight. Such an innocent request… such a simple desire, and the Institute had not even granted him  _ that  _ without great cost. He stood up, slowly. “I’m going to guess that wasn’t the answer you or your scientists wanted.”

“It was not. And so we dropped you from the Courser program, despite your promising results, wiped your memory of it clean. It was a shame, really. If you hadn’t been broken the way you were… the way you  _ are _ … you could have been one of our best.”

Kori came to Danse’s side just as the intercom system interrupted any further conversation.

“All right, good job!” Sturges praised Kori. “Looks like that’s opened things up enough for you to reach the reactor. Some other good news: I’ve almost got the teleporter working. Should be ready to pull you out whenever you need.”

“We need to go, Danse.” Kori tugged at his wrist, but he gently pried her off.

“Just a second.” Danse turned back to Shaun with fire in his eyes. 

“Before we go, and turn this place to a radioactive crater along with you inside of it, I just want to say… thank you. For pulling me from the Courser program. If you hadn’t, I wouldn’t have gained the desire to escape. I wouldn’t have been given a new life. I wouldn’t have formed my own personality, and I wouldn’t have been able to grow and change. Your loss was my victory, and I hope you go to your grave realizing it’s very possible this  _ all  _ could have been avoided if you treated your Synths like real living beings.”

Shaun said nothing in response. He only narrowed his eyes, before turning away from the two of them.

Kori’s expression was once again unreadable. She swallowed thickly, before taking a hold of Danse’s wrist, and leading him out and away from Father. No more words were spoken among any of them, and the old man was left in silence.


	28. Chapter 28

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> *Narrator voice*
> 
> It was at this point Arthur knew... he fucked up.

“The Advanced Systems door is open,” Nick called out to them as they rejoined the small army on the main floor. “It’s now or never, kid.”

“Then let’s do it.” Kori walked ahead without hesitation, even as Danse and Nick swapped out and the ex-Paladin returned to his Power Armor.

“Hope you weren’t getting too comfy,” Danse teased, rolling his shoulders as he got re-accustomed to being in the bulky machinery.

“Well, it was nice not having to deal with being shot at and worrying about the resulting burns,” the old Synth confessed, “but I suppose I’ll make do somehow. Come on, Kori’s gonna need us to have her back.”

“I assume Curie is going to stay with the wounded?”

“And Hancock, too, until Sturges can get them teleported out of here.”

Danse looked back to where Hancock was, before fishing around in his inventory and tossing him some Med-X and stimpacks. “Stay safe, Hancock.”

“Safety’s my middle name,” the Ghoul called back, lifting the shots in a sort of toast.

“Come on,” Danse said to Nick. “Let’s make sure Kori finishes this.”

Those who remained of the group stuck close with her, all the way to the reactor room itself. Kori rushed up to the window to peer out at the reactor, and yelped as a shot grazed past her forehead. Preston caught her as she stumbled backwards, and despite the nasty gash on her right temple, she righted herself with a growl.

“Synths,” she informed everyone. “And not the easy-to-kill kind. Mac, I’m counting on you with that sniper rifle. Take care of those turrets, and that Synth with the rocket launcher.

“I’m sorry, the _what now_.”

Kori looked around for someone else to give specific orders to, and paled. Danse, Nick, Preston, and MacCready were the only close companions she had left. Just as she was seemingly about to express her distress, Arthur Maxson shoved his way forwards from the back of the group. In his hands he held two grenades. He pulled the pin on both with just his teeth, before chucking them out the broken window.

“We don’t have time to waste,” he snarled, grabbing his laser minigun again and kicking open the double doors behind Kori. An explosion caused shouts of agony to rise from the room below. “Either you will lead, or I will, but either way, we will _not_ shy away from victory when it is just within our grasp. Come on, Paladin. Show the Institute that together, we are strong.”

“I’ll come as well,” Danse insisted. The two of them jerked their gazes to look at him, and to everyone’s shock, the Elder hummed in agreement.

“Excellent.” Maxson nodded his approval. “Stick close, and protect Kori with your life. Do you understand?”

Danse blinked in surprise, before offering a hesitant smile. “Your orders? Always.”

“Mac, the rocket launcher,” Kori reminded the sniper, before she, Maxson, and Danse all hurried down the stairs. They came to a locker room just before the reactor room, and Maxson let his weapon spin, ready to fire.

“I need cover fire, Danse. If you can supply me with that, these Synths will be nothing but scrap metal in no time.”

“I’ll always have your back, Elder.” Danse lifted his laser rifle-- he hoped, for the last time today-- and stepped out, opening fire on a Synth across the room. Another shot rang out, this one of a sniper rifle, and somewhere above Danse, there was an indignant creaking of metal. Arthur came to stand by Danse’s side, and with a cry of “Ad Victoriam!” he began to plow through the Synths and scientists in the room with minigun fire. Kori, as well, made certain to shoot out at whatever she could reach.

They all fought from that position for a long time, before Danse heard the tell-tale sound of a rocket firing. Without even looking up to know where it was shooting from, he moved his arm back, whacking Elder Maxson in the chest and sending him flying back into the locker room.

“Look ou--”

And then, it hit him. The heat and the flames washed over Danse in a wave, a tidal wave, and the force of the explosion lifted him off of his feet. He only had a split second to consider the force of the explosion, if it could throw him like this, before he crashed into the wall a few feet away. He collapsed onto the stairs, and broke through the metal, falling to the floor.

With his hearing muffled and ringing, he only caught a mumbling of his name that sounded like it was Kori’s voice, but he couldn’t be certain. He shook his head, trying to clear his vision and his hearing, but all the motion caused was a few drops of blood to hit the ground beneath his head. He didn’t know what he was bleeding from, only that the blood _had_ to be his. When he glanced up, he saw the Synth with the rocket launcher aiming his way again, but the machine’s head yanked backwards suddenly, and then it fell back and was still. The rest of the Synths throughout the room fell, one by one, mostly to Maxson’s laser rifle, but a few he knew was of Kori’s doing.

“Fuck! Is he okay!?” Mac shouted from the room above, panicked about Danse’s wellbeing.

Danse tried to move to a sitting position, instead of laying on his stomach, but the motion caused him excruciating agony, particularly in his right shoulder. He hissed and fell still, hoping that the damage wasn’t too severe.

A few moments later, both Kori and Maxson were rushing over to him. The vault dweller was muttering worriedly to herself as she took a hold of his face, turning it left to right.

“Danse,” Kori said, “tell me you can hear me.” As she did, Maxson rushed to his right side and started pulling on something.

“It’s stuck,” he informed her with a grunt. “I can’t break it, and it’s unlikely from this position we can pull him off of it. We’ll need some sort of tool to cut it before we can attempt to remove it.”

“Cut... cut what?” Danse turned his head to look up at the Elder, and stopped part way.

That was a railing jammed in his right shoulder. The force of the blast had caused it to pierce right through his Power Armor from behind. The ex-Paladin wasn’t sure if the fact it wasn’t coming out the other side of his Power Armor made the situation less or more bearable. Danse trembled at the sight, eyes going wide, but Maxson crouched so that he was facing him, making eye contact.

“Soldier,” he commanded, “keep your head. We’re going to get you out of this. Deep breaths. The damage could have been far, far worse.”

Shakily, Danse nodded. Kori stepped away to find something to cut the railing with just as Nick rushed in, skidding to his knees in front of Danse. Arthur recoiled at the Synth, but before he could say one word, the old Synth barked, “Keep a lid on it, Maxson. Danse, deep breaths.”

“I’m fine,” he muttered, even as he continued to shake. The pain was finally starting to register now, and he grunted as he dropped his head. Nick caught him in his hands, kneeling down so that their faces were close together.

“Yeah, you’re okay,” Nick agreed. “But right now, it’s okay to make some noise about it. How about you talk to me, eh? Tell me about… tell me about the happiest day of your life.”

As Nick said that, the world faded around Danse. But in his mind, he could hear the cheering. The Vertibirds. The music, the glasses clinking.

“Elder Maxson’s inauguration,” he muttered. “I’d… I’d been by his side. Trained him after… after Sarah Lyons passed. Seeing him up there… on the stage, at the podium… I could not have been more proud. He’d grown, so much. Taken on his role unflinchingly, without hesitation. He surpassed me, in every way, shape, and form. Knowing that I had taken part in shaping such a powerful leader…”

Danse trailed off. His vision began to return to him, and when he looked up and saw Nick’s expression…

“... my only regret,” he finished, “is that in focusing all my effort into making him powerful and dutiful… I neglected to teach him empathy.”

Nick’s eyes widened, before he steeled his expression from the cringe before into something impassive. It was at that moment that the railing finally broke, and the vibration of it rattled through Danse’s bones. He cried out in agony as he fell, hissing through the pain.

“His clavicle is likely broken,” the Elder said, voice too steady given the situation. “It will be a miracle if anything else _isn’t_ broken. Paladin Farnsworth, if you would be so kind to aid me, we can remove him from his Power Armor and finish our mission.”

“Danse, darling,” Kori said softly, and his heart pounded fit to burst from his ribcage, “I’m sorry, this is going to hurt. Take a deep breath when I tell you to, okay?”

Danse dropped his head into Nick’s waiting hands again, and whimpered, but nodded.

“Three, two, _breathe_ \--”

And then his vision burned white, and Danse screamed. The pain pulsed throughout his entire body in time with his heartbeat, and his left hand clenched and slammed into the ground. There was a hand petting through his hair while the other continued to support his head, and once he had calmed, there was air at his back, and he suddenly found himself being yanked out of his Power Armor by strong arms.

“That’s it, soldier,” Arthur said, strangely reassuring. He looped Danse’s left arm around his shoulder, supporting him as Kori tossed away the broken railing. Nick stood slowly.

“You’re okay, Danse,” the old Synth assured him, approaching him with some gauze he picked up from a med kit on his way rushing down to the wounded man. He began to wrap it around his shoulder as Maxson held on to him. “Let’s get this patched up and get you a stimpack.”

“I’ve got him,” Maxson said, and he fumbled inside his coat pockets with his free hand until he found one. He injected it into Danse’s shoulder after taking a hold of his waist and switching hands, and Danse threw his head back in agony at the injection. “We’ll have your medic take a look at that broken collarbone once we return to the surface. Paladin, the pulse charge.”

Kori nodded, and walked past them and up the stairs to the generator. Maxson began pulling Danse out of the room, back through the locker room the way that they had come. Nick trailed behind quietly. About halfway up the stairs, Maxson spoke.

“You’re wrong, you know.”

“About?” Danse grunted.

“About failing to teach me empathy. That… was through fault of my own.”

Danse looked over at Maxson, but the other man’s own gaze was focused on the path before them. Still, the look on his face radiated regret.

“It’s never too late for change,” the ex-Paladin reminded him quietly.

They made their way back to the control center of the reactor room, and Preston pulled out a chair for Danse. The man dropped tiredly down into it, wincing. “I’ll wear your Power Armor out of here,” Preston promised, “so it doesn’t get left behind.”

“Thank you,” Danse wheezed, and Preston walked briskly past him downstairs. MacCready, Maxson, Danse, and Nick all watched Kori through the window as she worked on hacking the terminal to the generator.

“She’s a powerful woman,” the Elder mused aloud, hands clasped behind his back.

“Oh yeah. She could totally kick your ass if she wanted to. I mean, she probably couldn’t beat you at an arm-wrestling match, but if someone offered her twenty caps to punch you in the face, she’d probably say, ‘I only need ten.’”

Maxson ignored MacCready’s commentary. “I am more than aware that Paladin Farnsworth despises me. I am more than aware that she lacks respect. But her strongly worded commentary on my leadership has, at the very least, inspired some self-reflection where I have noticed certain aspects of myself that I, too, would frown upon if I saw it in anyone else. This hypocritical behavior _will_ cease, with practice, and hopefully, I can reform myself into a more respectable leader of such a highly regarded organization.”

Nick chuckled as he leaned back against the wall. “Oh, if only Piper were in here. I can hear the headline now: ‘Brotherhood Elder may have a conscience after all!’”

“What this does _not_ mean,” Arthur responded to Nick coldly, “is that my view on Synths or Ghouls have changed, or formed exceptions. Danse is one of Kori’s soldiers, and during this operation, the Minutemen are to be treated like my own. The same goes for you, hence why you aren’t scrap by my hands.”

“Never said you were having a complete change of heart, Maxson. Only said maybe you’ve got the _capacity_ for it after all.”

Preston reemerged in the room in Danse’s Power Armor, and down below, Kori had powered down the reactor, and had just finished setting the charge. She gave a thumbs up to Preston, and the Minuteman leader pressed a metal finger to the comms on his ear.

“We need to get out of here, and fast, before they figure out what we’ve done. Sturges! You reading me? We’re done down here. Zap us back to the Relay room! Every last one of us!”

Danse watched as, one by one, everyone blinked out of sight. He stood, slowly, in order to look at Kori out in the reactor room. She gave him a small smile and a wave, before everything went black.

 

* * *

 

When Danse stumbled back into existence, his stomach roiled. He fell to his knees and gasped, trying not to vomit, but the pain in his shoulder overpowered his will to hold it together, and he emptied his stomach on the floor.

“Oh, nice one, Danse,” Cait scoffed from somewhere behind him. A few people laughed, and a Minuteman offered him her hand once he was finished. Once Kori appeared, Preston nodded to himself.

“All right, Struges, we’re done. Get us the hell out of here.”

Struges looked up from the console before him apologetically. “I would, man, but… this kid showed up. Says he’s the General’s son.”

Danse furrowed his brow. Kid? But Shaun was a grown man. A dying old man. Danse and Kori both walked around opposite sides of the console… and sure enough, behind Sturges was a young boy. Maybe about ten. And Danse could have passed off the skin tone as coincidence, but those freckles were unmistakable. Kori had been telling the truth: there was a Synth version of her ten year old son.

The little boy regarded Danse for a moment, wide umber eyes, before turning back around to Kori in a flash. He rushed up to her, pawing at her coat like a puppy.

“Please mom, don’t leave me here! I want to go with you!”

Danse watched as the color drained from Kori’s face. Her attention was only on the child before her, and nothing else, as if the world had completely vanished.“Why did you call me ‘mom’?” she asked breathlessly, the wind having been punched out of her from the little boy’s begging.

“What? You’re my mother! Why else would I call you that?”

“Who _told_ you that I was your mother?”

“What do you mean? Nobody told me, you just are.”

Kori took a step back, and shook her head. Her breathing came quick, too quick, and Danse started to move towards her, instinctively wanting to protect and comfort her, but he stopped himself short. This was a personal matter. Only Kori could decide for herself how she wanted this encounter to go down.

“I’m not your mother,” she croaked. “Whoever told you that was lying.”

“But you are!” Shaun exclaimed, jumping up and down. “Nobody told me, I just know it! Why would you say you’re not? Don’t you love me anymore?”

Kori’s mouth flapped. She looked up to Danse, and to Maxson, who had come to stand by his side. As he did so, Danse came to the realization of just how few of them there were left. The room had been packed with soldiers, both Minutemen and Brotherhood, upon initial arrival. Now, there were only a handful left of both. Danse could probably do a head count and still have time for another as Kori decided what she wanted to do with Shaun.

A broken sob broke Danse from his musings, and his gaze yanked back to Kori as she tugged the little boy into her arms.

“... of course I still love you, Shaun. I always will.”

“Then don’t leave me here to die!” the little boy whimpered. “Take me with you, please!”

Next to him, Maxson made a sound of disgust. Danse was instantly engulfed with quiet rage at the Elder’s lack of sympathy and elbowed him in the side, despite his bad arm. When their eyes locked, Danse made certain Maxson could hear him and only Maxson.

“This is all she has left,” Danse reminded him with a hiss. He glanced back to the woman and the boy-- this poor boy who, like him, had never asked to be created, who only wanted companionship, compassion, love. Even if he was a creation of the Institute, it wasn’t his fault. He did not deserve to suffer the organization’s fate. “This is the closest she’ll ever come to having her family again. Let her have this.”

Somehow, Arthur’s steely blue eyes softened, and he said nothing more on the matter.

“All right, you can come with me.” Kori smiled down at the little boy as tears streamed from her eyes. Whether they were tears of confliction or relief, or perhaps some combination of both, Danse couldn’t tell.

The little boy clutched at his mother’s arms wildly. “Really? Do you mean it?”

“Yes, I mean it. Now let’s get out of here.”

Shaun beamed, and hugged his mother firmly. “I’m glad you were here to save me.”

The vault dweller froze, then covered her mouth, and bit back another sob. Once she had finally composed herself, she patted Shaun on the head, before they parted and she turned to regard Sturges.

“All right, Sturges. Fire it up.”

“Didn’t leave anything behind, did you? All set to get out of here?”

“ _Absolutely_.” Kori stood taller, prouder, and puffed out her chest. Danse’s own chest swelled with pride at the sight of her confidence, her eagerness to finish this once and for all. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

“You got it! I’m going to teleport the Brotherhood soldiers back to the Prydwen, the Minutemen soldiers back to the Castle, and you and the rest of us to the detonation site. Don’t worry, Maxson, you’ll get to see the fireworks, too. We’ll send the kid back the the Castle, too-- we’ll get him a change of clothes and look after him. You press that button _extra_ hard when you get there.”

Sturges looked back to Kori as, one by one, Brotherhood and Minutemen were teleported out of the room.

“See you on the other side.”

Danse took a step forwards to wish Kori safe travels, but again, the world flashed black before he had the chance to say anything.

When next the world appeared, Danse was greeted by blue skies. He gasped as air rushed back into his lungs, and thankfully, did not throw up this time, due to there being nothing left in his stomach. Nick rushed over to help ease him to his feet, being mindful of his shoulder all the while.

“That’s it, easy, Danse,” the old Synth urged him, and soon enough, Danse found himself overlooking the Commonwealth. Ahead lay the ruins of the CIT, where beneath he knew lay the Institute-- a massive bomb ready to blow.

“This is it,” he murmured as Nick held him. “This is the end of the Institute. The Commonwealth will be free. At last.”

Nick nodded quietly. “At last…”

One by one, the rest of the companions teleported in. Cait, Piper, Curie, Deacon, Preston, MacCready, Hancock. Maxson.

A minute passed. A minute passed… but Kori did not arrive. They waited a minute longer, but still, nothing. The companions began to whisper amongst themselves. Preston frowned, and held a finger to his ear.

“Sturges, did you relay Kori out?” The look he shot to Danse and the others screamed that something was amiss. Danse separated himself from Nick to approach the Minuteman leader. “She’s not _here,_ Sturges.”

“Let me try,” Maxson insisted, and he, too, placed a finger to his own ear. “Paladin Farnsworth, report.”

“Where the hell’s Blue?” Piper demanded to know, holding on to Cait for support.

“We’re trying to get it sorted,” Preston assured her. “Everyone just hang tight. Sturges, are you _sure_ you--”

“Paladin! Slow down!” Maxson barked. “I can’t understand you!”

Preston immediately dropped his hand from his ear and rushed over to the Brotherhood leader. “You’ve got her?”

Maxson snapped up a hand, motioning for silence. “You’re _what?_ Paladin exp--”

There was high squealing from the earpiece, and Maxson cringed as he yanked it out of his ear. Once it was out in the open, Danse caught on to what Kori was screaming.

“-- got my arm stuck in a wall! The teleportation glitched out, I’m back in the reactor room!”

Preston’s eyes widened. “Sturges, Kori needs another relay, she’s in the reactor room, get her out of there, _now!_ ”

Just as he said that, Kori shouted out again. “There’s no time to relay me out! More Synths are coming! They’re going to kill me, and they’ll get their hands on the pulse charger, you need to press that button _now!_ ”

“No!” Danse screamed, yanking the earpiece out of Maxson’s hands. “Hang on, Kori, just a minute more--”

“Maxson, as Minuteman General, I’m _ordering_ you to light it up!”

“ _Kori!_ ”

The Elder was already in action. He shoved Danse aside in his haste to get to the button, but Nick came to block the way. He held out his arms to either side, ready to fend off attack, though his stance was uncertain.

“You listen here, you bast--”

Arthur punched Nick across the face, sending the old Synth sprawling, and flipped all of the buttons on the detonator. Danse rushed forwards, uncaring for his broken shoulder, and slammed himself into Maxson.

“ _Stop!_ ”

“I have my orders!” the Brotherhood leader snapped, struggling with Danse.

“Danse, listen,” Kori shouted, and Danse could hear gunfire.

“Sturges, they’re about to blow it, get out of there! Get to the Castle!” Preston shouted into his own ear piece. The other companions struggled amongst themselves, holding each other back and screaming at each other.

“Danse… listen. Thank you, for everything. I lo--”

Maxson punched Danse in the nose, and slammed his fist down on the detonator.

“ **_NO!_ ** ”

Danse swiped out Arthur’s legs and yanked on the detonator, hoping, _praying_ for a miracle as he snapped the device in half…

Only a second later, there was a flash of light over the edge of the balcony, and then the explosion itself rocked the building. Curie and Piper screamed, hunkering down together, while the other companions dropped as well. Preston was the only one who remained standing, thanks to still being in Danse’s Power Armor, and even then, the force of the blast caused him to stumble back.

Nobody rose from their positions until the rumbling ceased. Even then, most remained lying down, wide, terrified eyes seemingly glued into position. And then, Nick was the first to lift himself, after snapping his jaw back into place. His jaw fell agape again, however, at the sight that greeted him. He took stumbling steps towards the railing and leaned against it heavily.

“... ‘We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. And now, now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'”

Slowly, everyone stood, one after the other. Danse was the last to rise, knowing that what he would see would utterly tear him apart. He rose, still clutching the earpiece in his hand, even though it was only static, now. He sighed in utter and abject defeat, slumping against the railing and numb to everything around him.

There, before him, was the mushroom cloud. Dust and debris littered the Commonwealth for miles in almost a fog-like haze, and several old, decrepit buildings were still in the process of collapsing, only adding to the destruction. Fire still climbed into the sky like a great dragon’s breath, blocking out the sun and casting everything in shadow.

Danse watched this all, and then threw the earpiece over the edge of the balcony, before turning to Maxson in a blind rage.

“You son of a bitch!” he screamed, and taking the Elder by surprise, he punched him across the face, uncaring of the shouts around him, whether approving or indignant. “You could have waited!”

Maxson rubbed his cheek, wincing, but he did not retaliate. “I can assure you that Paladin Farnsworth’s sacrifice was not in vain. We have accomplished our tas--”

“Sacrifice? _Sacrifice!?_ ” Danse gestured to the cloud behind them. “That was not sacrifice! That was murder, and you’re the culprit! You _murdered_ her!”

“We _all_ 'murdered' a lot of people today!” The Elder stood tall, and came to stare Danse down. “That’s what war _is_ , soldier. Your time in the Commonwealth has made you soft. _Farnsworth_ made you soft.”

“ _Kori_ made me _human_!”

“You are _not_ human, and you will never _be_ human!”

It was at that point that Hancock stepped forwards, baring his teeth. “Danse is more human than you could ever hope to be, you fuckin’ psychopath!”

“How _dare_ you speak to me!”

“Please!” Curie screamed, tears streaming down her face. “Please, stop this! All of you! The fighting is over now! There’s nothing we can do, this is all pointless!”

“Kori’s _murder_ was pointless!” Danse cried out. He paced, shaking his head and biting back tears of his own. “And yet here we all are, aren’t we? She was supposed to be here, _she_ was supposed to be the one pushing _that_ button, but you!” He pointed at Maxson. “You couldn’t have waited a few more seconds for her to be teleported out! You were so eager to be the man to push the button, you didn’t take her life into account!”

“Farnsworth knew the risks! She _ordered_ me to flip the switch and to destroy the Institute--”

“And since when have you taken orders from subordinates before!?”

“This was _her_ operation, Danse. I was under her command for this.”

The ex-Paladin shut his lips, shaking his head as the first few tears slipped past.

“Would you have done the same to me, were I still one of your soldiers? If I was human? If I was in her shoes, trapped, alone?”

Then, it was the Elder’s turn to fall silent.

They stared each other down for a few moments, before there was a spark of electricity a few feet away. Danse jumped back, eyes wide, and everyone else moved to allow space as well. Nick, who was still on his ass on the ground, scrambled to get away.

There was another spark, larger than before. And then, there was a crash-- a blast of blue so bright, Danse and everyone else had to shield their eyes from it. The wind blasted over them like another explosion before it all settled down. Danse lowered his arm from his face just as there were alarmed shouts and screams, and he didn’t wait for his brain to register the sight before him before rushing forwards. He felt slow, sluggishly slow, and time felt like it nearly came to a halt at the sight that greeted him. He skidded to his knees just in time, catching the new arrival before they could collapse and hurt themselves. Wide pear-green eyes looked up into his umber ones, glassy and distant.

“... Danse? I can’t feel my arm,” Kori whispered, before her head lolled to one side, and she slipped into unconsciousness.

“No, no no, Kori, _Kori_ ,” Danse pleaded, holding her face in his hands as she fell limp against him. His heart screamed out, crying as a darkness began to compress on it, squeezing it so tight it hurt, and he could not breathe. Behind him, distantly, he could hear Maxson calling for a Vertibird, and Curie rushed in with her jacket, shoving it onto Kori’s stump where her arm had once been and urging Danse to take a firm hold of it and to hold it there, _not to move_ . “Kori _please_ , damn it, _no_ , stay-- stay with me! Please! _Kori please, no!_ ”

Nick slid in next to Danse, cracking open Kori’s eyes one at a time. Her pupils were two different sizes.

“She’s got a concussion,” the old Synth murmured. “Probably got relayed out literally _milliseconds_ after the explosion. Broken hip, ribs… Curie, what else.”

“Her foot has been _shattered_ ,” the medic trembled, fingers questing over Kori’s skin in search for breaks or irregularities. “Her left shoulder, besides her arm being gone, has caved in on itself. It is likely that the force of the explosion pressed her arm into her body, breaking through the socket and through more bones. I would need proper medical equipment to perform a more professional examination.”

“She needs the best help in the Commonwealth,” Danse begged. “Please, Curie. Where should we take her?”

The Synth woman took a deep breath. “Monsieur Maxson!”

The Brotherhood leader snapped his gaze over to her.

“We must escort Kori to Vault 81! There are doctors there, professional doctors with great equipment! They can help Madame Kori! Please! When the Vertibird arrives, that is where we must take her!”

“If you have the directions, I will relay them,” he promised. “The Vertibird can only escort so many, however. Only four of you may accompany us.”

“Danse and Curie, for sure,” Nick stated without pause.

“You’re important to her, Nick,” Piper cut in, “You should go too.”

“I vote for Hancock to accompany us as well,” Danse added.

Both the Ghoul and the Elder looked up in shock. “What?” They spoke simultaneously, and then glared at each other.

“Hancock is the only reason Kori lived long enough outside of her own vault in order to join the Brotherhood in the first place,” Danse informed Arthur. “Therefore, I _politely_ request that Hancock be chosen as our fourth companion.”

“Fine.” He spat it out like ill-tasting medicine. “To Vault 81, then. Posthaste.”

The Vertibird arrived shortly thereafter, and Danse held Kori close to himself as he stepped aboard. Maxson followed next, aiding curie and Nick in their boarding, but letting Hancock fare for himself.

“Vault 81,” he demanded the pilot, “quickly. Time is not on our side today.”

The flight there was bumpy but quick, much to Danse’s relief. Hancock, who was seated across the way from Danse, reached over and took a hold of Kori’s hand, rubbing his withered thumb over her smoother skin.

“Come on, vaultie,” he begged her himself, and for the first time, Danse saw true fear in the Ghoul’s obsidian eyes. “Pull through, damnit.”

Upon arrival before the cave into the vault, the four of them jumped off all at the same time. “Allow me to go first,” Curie stated. “They know me; they will let us in if they know you are my friends.”

The six of them rushed inside, Danse still holding Kori close. Before them loomed the great metal door of the vault, and Curie did not hesitate in rushing up to the console. She approached it, and cursed, pounding on it angrily.

“We need a Pip-Boy!” she shouted, and Danse’s heart sank into his stomach at the recollection that Kori always wore hers on her _left_ arm.

“Forget about it, I’ll hack the damn thing,” Nick grumbled, pushing Curie aside and breaking into the console, fiddling around with wires. The speaker crackled to life just a few moments later.

“Just _what_ do you think you’re doing!? That is property of Vault 81--”

“Gwen!” Curie shouted. “Gwen, it is Curie! I have Madame Kori with me, she is in critical condition and needs immediate medical help! _S'il te plaît!_ ”

“H-hold on, slow down, what happened? Does it have to do with the seismic activity we picked up on a half hour ago?”

“ _Oui, oui!_ She was terribly injured! I can explain later, but please! She is dying!”

“Open the vault.”

“Overseer--”

“Do you remember what Kori Farnsworth has done for us!? Open the damn vault!”

Sirens blared and yellow lights flashed. Kori jolted awake in Danse’s arms, crying out in alarm, but he quieted her swiftly, brushing hair back from her face. Her wide eyes darted around, unseeing, and she squirmed in panic. But Danse hushed her gently, and shook her body until she fell still, eyes locked onto his. “It’s okay,” he reassured her. “We’re going to get you help. You can rest, it’s all going to be okay.”

The vault dweller whimpered and tried to move her left arm, but Danse held it firm.

“Rest,” he emphasized again, and Kori finally fell still. She blinked blearily up at Danse, and her lips moved, but no sound came out. Soon, she was once again unconscious and limp in his arms.

“The vault is opening,” Maxson reminded them. “Keep Paladin Farnsworth close. We don’t have time to lose.”

The six of them marched towards the opening door, and the minute the walkway extended, the Overseer was rushing forwards. She met them halfway, before stopping short at the sight that greeted her, and the sheer number of people. The woman glanced back at the doctors waiting, and then back to the group.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “we can only accept one of you to come in with her, alongside Curie. We simply don’t have enough room or provisions to provide for all of you.”

There was no hesitation; Nick spoke up, giving Danse a gentle push. “Go,” he urged, “we’ll be fine.”

But Danse looked back uncertainly-- he was leaving a Synth and a Ghoul alone with Elder Maxson, of all people, not to mention he was terrified enough as it was at the sheer fact the Kori may not live to see the morning.

“Danse,” Hancock barked, “get going. We’ll head back to Sanctuary and get shit set up. Last thing Kori’s gonna need is the bullshit welcoming party at the Castle. We’ll get everyone together, but you’ve gotta go.”

“Monsieur Danse,” Curie pleaded, placing a hand on his shoulder, “we _must_ go. Time is of the essence.”

With one final glance back towards Nick, Danse hesitantly moved forwards, into the vault with Curie and the Overseer at his side. Kori was torn from his arms and placed on a gurney, and Maxson, Hancock, and Nick were only left to watch helplessly as the other three vanished around the corner, and they were escorted from the vault. The great steel door shut behind them, the resulting slam echoing throughout the cavern.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah so. jsut got off of work from an 8 hour shift. edited about half the chapter before i needed a bath. Minor edits may be made later today.


	29. Chapter 29

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah I got no interesting words for this chapter. But I've also still got those [writing requests](http://dylawa.tumblr.com/writing-requests)? If you want? Maybe? Please..?

A concussion. A broken collar bone. A dislocated scapula and shattered shoulder socket. Two broken ribs. A fractured ilium, a snapped fibula, and shattered phalanges, metatarsals, and tarsals. Internal bleeding. Severe organ trauma. Severe blood loss. Radiation poisoning.

The list kept expanding, even after that, but Danse couldn’t bear to listen to any more. Curie had set his broken collarbone, stitched up his wounds and put his arm in a sling, but even she was teary-eyed as she went down the list of everything she had found to be amiss with the vault dweller with the help of Dr. Forsyth. He stopped her from speaking with a shake of his head and a crack of his voice.

“Just stop, Curie.” He placed his head in his left hand, doing everything in his power to keep his composure. “Just… fix her. Please. Help her to the best of your ability, make her well.”

The Synth woman lowered her clipboard with a tremble to her lip.

“I… I so wish it were that simple, Monsieur. But Madame Kori… sometime during the transition from the entrance to the vault to down here, she has gone comatose.”

“Comatose…” Danse bit back a cry of alarm, bringing a hand to cover his mouth.

“Yes. There was swelling in her brain due to her head injury, and as a result, there was significant pressure applied to her Reticular Activating System. Dr. Forsyth and I have already given her medication to help reduce the swelling, and we are monitoring her vitals very closely. With luck, she will recover in a few days. Otherwise…”

Curie trailed off, her clipboard falling to her side as she wiped some tears from her face. Danse stood up from his chair and extended his good arm, and the woman rushed into his embrace with a sob.

“I-- there was-- there was nothing I could do. One minute she was gone, and the next…”

“It’s not your fault, Curie,” he comforted her, talking into her hair as she sobbed against him. “It’s not your fault. It’s okay. There wasn’t anything anyone could do.”

Behind them, Kori lay still. The left side of her face was completely swollen, an oxygen mask over her nose and mouth. Corrective surgery had been performed on her shoulder and her foot immediately after the x-rays had been taken, and she was attached to three drips-- one for blood, one for Radaway, and one for morphine. Her left arm had cut short just below her armpit, bandaged and closed up, while her left leg lay suspended

It was only the beginning, Danse knew. They’d only been in the vault for a day, and Danse knew it was only the beginning of the struggles that would lie ahead of them.

Curie pulled away from Danse with a sniffle, wiping her eyes yet again. “I… I am sorry--”

“Please, don’t apologize. We almost lost someone very dear to the both of us, and even still, her condition is… less than desireable. It’s alright, Curie. You don’t have to apologize. I feel the same way.”

The Synth woman nodded, holding her clipboard close to her chest as she stepped to one side. “The… the Overseer was wanting a word with you, once I had informed you of Kori’s condition. Though she did say you may eat first, if necessary. Did… did you eat at all yesterday?”

“I’ll eat after I’ve spoken with her,” Danse replied, dodging Curie’s last question. “Please… make Kori comfortable.”

"No. You will eat first. Please."

Danse straightened himself out and presented with a resigned sigh, and stood slowly. Before he could manage to leave, though, Curie’s hand was at his shoulder.

“Danse? I… I found these around her neck, beneath her clothing.”

Slowly, Danse turned to face the Synth woman, and held out his hand. What she dropped into his open palm made all of his blood drain from his face. His Brotherhood holotags. In perfect condition, if maybe one corner  of the tags were a little scorched. Danse closed his hand around them tightly, uncertain what to say in response. His throat bobbed as he swallowed thickly, and with a terse nod, he exited the doctor’s office quickly.

Finding his way around was a bit of a struggle, after having spent nearly an entire day in the medical wing, but one of the vault dwellers were kind enough to guide him back to the main room of the vault. Those that regarded him offered only small nods of acknowledgement; Danse got the feeling that cordiality was not the norm for these vault dwellers. As he got in line to get some food, however, a young boy with fiery hair bolted up to him without a single moment's hesitation.

“Hey! You came in with Kori, right?”

The ex-Paladin blinked in surprise at the forwardness of the child, but slipped into a small smile. “I did. She’s not doing very well. She’s going to need a lot of help over the next little while.”

“Oh yeah, I heard. Dr. Pensky won’t let me go to see her though. She says it might scare me, but I’m not scared of anything! And Kori’s my friend. She saved my life!

“Did she, now.” Danse placed his hands on his hips and arched an eyebrow. “How did she do that?”

“Well, one of the other residents, Bobby, found this hole in the wall! I saw him open it once, so I went inside to see what was in there, too. It was just his drug stash. But there was also a mole rat! It had some sort of weird sickness. Dr. Pensky tells me I could have died if Kori hadn’t gone inside and searched for something to help me. They didn’t want me to know, but apparently, there was a whole other secret vault! And there were scientists inside making some sort of virus to infect the other side of the vault with!”

Danse frowned at that. So this vault _was_ supposed to be a sick experiment, like all of the others. But what had happened? “These other scientists… how long ago were they alive?”

“Oh, they died a long time ago, don’t worry,” the little boy assured Danse. “Apparently the very first Overseer locked them away so they couldn’t hurt us. That didn’t mean that took care of the mole rats, though. Kori did that! And that’s how she found Curie!”

“Curie is from Vault 81?”

“Yeah! Though… I don’t know how she became human. It’s crazy. Like something out of a fairy tale!”

Danse pursed his lips. He would have to ask Kori or Curie for the details on how exactly it happened, because now he was curious for the whole story as well. “I’m sorry, kid, I don’t think I ever got your name?”

The little boy beamed up at Danse. “I’m Austin, And you?”

“You can just call me Danse. Is there…" He went quiet, for a long moment, before asking, "... anything more you can tell me about Kori?”

Just like that, the fire in Austin’s hair spread to his eyes, and he danced in place excitedly. Once Danse had gotten his food, Austin dragged him to a table and told him everything Kori had told him. He told Danse about her emergence from her own vault, her journey across the Commonwealth to Goodneighbor and the strange Ghoul she met (what kind of person calls himself ‘Hancock’? That’s a silly name). He told Danse about the lonely sniper in the bar, the woman in the fighter cage, the banished news reporter, the missing detective, and how the three of them saved the detective from an untimely fate. He told Danse about the journey into Concord and her meeting with the Minutemen, and the battle with the Deathclaw.

And then, there were the stories Danse didn’t know. He first told Danse about how Kori followed the red line in the ground and discovered a secret organization of slave liberators. He told Danse about the “intelligent” Super Mutants, and the littlest one’s quest for the milk of human kindness. There was the story of the nervous boy in Diamond City who she helped to find his courage, about the little Ghoul boy stuck in a fridge who was reunited with his parents after 200 years, and the ship that soared through the sky, if only for a few moments. He told Danse about how she had to drain a great dig site and how she almost drowned in pulling the plugs, how she dug her way into a mayor’s stash of goods (Danse knew _that_ one, at least), and how she returned a Deathclaw egg to its mother. The one where she pretended to be the Silver Shroud seemed to be Austin’s favorite.

Danse listened to this all quietly, head in his hand. All of these people Kori helped, all of the changes she had been a part of throughout the Commonwealth, and Danse never knew. She had been a part of so much, had made her mark almost everywhere. No wonder she had considered leaving. If only the world knew what had become of their heroine. Would they mourn? Would they become angry? Or would the Commonwealth remain silent? Would she just be another face lost to the thousands?

“... and so, the Silver Shroud swept in to save Kent Connolly, their faithful companion, and shot down--!”

“Austin? What have we told you about standing on the tables?”

Danse and Austin both turned their heads at the sound of the Overseer’s voice, and the young boy scrambled off of the table as the woman came to stand before them, Dr. Forsyth at her side. She smiled gently down at the small boy. “You’re not bothering our guest now, are you?”

“No, Overseer! I was just telling Danse how awesome Kori is!” The boy patted Danse’s arm. “After everything she’s been through, there’s no _way_ she won’t get better! Just you wait! It’s all gonna be okay.”

The ex-Paladin smiled at Austin. “I appreciate your confidence, Austin. Thank you.”

“Austin, why don’t you run along now,” Dr. Forsyth urged him with a wave of his hands. “The Overseer and I need to have a word with Danse.”

“Okay. It was nice to meet you, Danse! See you later!”

And with that, the little boy was off, running down the vault halls. Danse stood from the table with a grunt.

“I apologize, Overseer. I lost track of the time. Austin is very good at storytelling.”

“It’s no problem,” the woman assured him. She gestured towards the stairs with a wave of her hand. “Let’s talk in my office. We won’t keep you long-- it’s getting late, after all.”

The three of them traversed the stairs into the Overseer’s office. Danse was directed to take a seat on one couch, and Gwen Forsyth took a seat on the other. The doctor began to pour drinks for everyone.

“Thank you for taking the time to speak with us,” Gwen said. “I’m sure this must be very trying times for you, and the last thing you want is to further discuss Kori’s predicament.”

“I will persevere,” Danse assured her, accepting a shot of whiskey and downing it in a single gulp. “Whatever you want to ask, I’ll answer.”

“Well, we got Curie’s side of the story on what happened,” Forsyth informed him. “We just want to make sure what we heard is correct, as it’s… rather incredible. Difficult to believe. I mean, we knew that Kori was an extraordinary woman, highly capable, but this seems… well, even for her, this seems too fantastic to be true.”

The doctor procured a notepad, and began reading off of it.

“According to Curie, Miss Farnsworth _singlehandedly_ united the Minutemen and the Brotherhood of Steel in a war against the Institute, after surviving an onslaught at Fort Independence from said organization. Upon gathering all troops from both sides, Miss Farnsworth slipped into the Institute via pipelines, teleported in both armies, and after leading a battle against Synthetic defenders, attached a _bomb_ to a fusion reactor, and blew it up from inside _while still present_ , only to be teleported away moments before she could have been burnt to a crisp, or worse, completely incinerated.”

The man looked up at Danse over the rims of his glasses. “Is all of that correct?”

“Most of it.” Danse sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose. “It was more of a temporary truce between the Minutemen and the Brotherhood, but yes, Kori united them against the Institute. I know that she slipped into the Institute through the water pipes, because I was with her when she did it. However, it wasn’t Kori that detonated the bomb. She couldn’t do that from inside the Institute. That was Elder Maxson’s doing.”

“He’s the leader of the Brotherhood of Steel, correct?” Gwen leaned forwards as she asked.

“He is. Kori recognized that she was trapped, with little chance for escape, and so commanded him to detonate the bomb despite still being inside of the Institute. Fortunately, she was still somehow salvaged… but at great cost. She informed us her arm was trapped inside of a wall, due to a glitch when she was supposed to be teleported out and _away_ from the Institute. It’s likely that, when our mechanic managed to lock on to her signal again, he could not save her arm, due to it being fused inside of the wall.”

“So _that’s_ how that happened,” Forsyth murmured, scribbling a note on his notepad.

“With all of the damage she’s sustained, it’s a miracle she’s still alive at all,” the Overseer informed Danse with a frown. “It’s a good thing you brought her to us-- I doubt the doctors of the Wasteland would have been much assistance with such traumatic injuries. Even still, we’ll have to watch her carefully over the hours of the next week. Anything could change at any time-- her condition isn’t stable.”

Danse bit his lip, before reaching for the bottle to pour himself another shot.

“If… if it turns out that she’ll have to remain on life support for an extended period of time--”

“We don’t have the resources to sustain her for any longer than a month or two,” Dr. Forsyth butt in, cringing at himself as he spoke. “As much as we would love to do _anything_ to keep her alive, after she saved Austin’s life, our resources are… limited. The morphine we currently are giving her will only last a week or two before even _that_ ’s run dry, not to mention all of the power the heart monitor and the oxygen pulls.”

“So you’re saying that if she can’t recover on her own, you’ll have to… oh my God.” Danse covered his mouth to stifle the trembling of his breath.

“This was… the primary reason we wanted to speak with you.” Gwen sat stiffly, keeping her formality despite the grim conversation. “We didn’t want you to be caught by surprise if, when the time comes and she hasn’t woken… well… this whole situation is very tricky to go about. There’s really no good outcome, given how grave her injuries are. Even if she recovers… she’ll never be the same.”

Danse shook his head wildly. “Please, you-- there has to be _something_ I can do.”

“Morphine primarily comes from the opium poppy, and the only place that’s grown anymore is here, in the vault. But plants don’t grow fast enough to give a constant supply like we need for Miss Farnsworth.” Forsyth straightened his glasses with a sigh. “And we’re already redirecting power from some of the resident’s rooms for her life support. This is all we can do.”

“Only time will determine if it’s enough.” The Overseer rubbed the side of her face in distress. “For now, all we can do is wait. Dr. Forsyth will show you to Kori’s room. You can stay there while you’re here, and we will do everything we can to make your stay comfortable.”

“I don’t need the room,” Danse mumbled. “I just need to be with her.”

The Overseer and the doctor shared a look. “Regardless, just in case you want an _actual_ bed, I’ll show you to Kori’s room anyways. If you’ll follow me…”

Danse and Dr. Forsyth stood together. The Overseer, as well, stood.

“Kori Farnsworth will be in our thoughts and prayers,” she promised the ex-Paladin. “In the meantime, make sure to take care of yourself. I’m sure it’s what Kori would have wanted. And after everything she's done for all of us... it's the least thanks we could give.”

 

* * *

 

Three days later, a package and a letter came in to the vault. The exchange was quick, and quiet, before the box was brought down into the depths of the vault. Austin insisted on being the one to deliver it to Danse and Curie, and at last, Dr. Pensky relented and allowed the boy entrance to the medical wing. After the heavy thing was placed on a cart, the boy was sent on his way.

When the boy rushed into the room, he stumbled to a halt upon seeing the vault dweller for the first time since she had arrived. His eyes went wide as the full moon as he finally beheld the extent of the damage, and understood why his grandmother had been so insistent he stay away. Danse looked up at Austin from his seat at Kori’s side just as Curie stood from her temporary desk.

“Austin? Oh, dear little boy, are you hurt?”

“No, Miss Curie,” the boy said softly, still unable to tear his eyes away from Kori. “I’m fine. You see, a man with goggles and overalls stopped by the vault. He brought this package, and a letter signed by all of Kori’s friends! Our class is working on making Kori letters too, but your friends beat us to it!”

“Oh, Austin, that is very sweet of you.” Curie crooned and pinched Austin’s cheek briefly. “Would you like to help me open this, then? Danse, you can read the letter while me and Austin find out what Sturges has brought us.”

The ex-Paladin stood quietly, and thanked Curie as she handed him the letter. Once she and Austin left to find something to help open the package, Danse sat back down at Kori’s side. He read the letter out-loud, mostly to calm his own nerves, but also because a distant, unreasonable part of him wanted Kori to hear it, too, though there was no possible chance that she could.

 

“ _Dear Curie, Danse, and Kori:_

 

_It’s only been four days since we last saw you, but we already miss you terribly. Everyone’s written their own individual letters, but this one here is from all of your friends as a whole. Mostly, this is just to inform you about the big package that came with this. But also, you’re probably wondering about the outside world, and how things have transpired since the fall of the Institute. We’ll start with the box._

_We’re not the brightest minds of the Commonwealth-- we never claimed to be, nor will we ever do so. But Nick got the bright idea that, if a human conscience could be transferred into a Synth body, maybe humans could also make use of Synthetic parts themselves. So we did a little dumpster-diving in our great big pile of Synths, and salvaged a left arm in perfect condition. Maybe somehow, those docs in the vault can get it attached to Kori in a way that she can use it, and it can replace what she lost._ ”

 

“Oh, wow!” Austin shouted from the other end of the room. “Is that a robot arm? Cool!”

 

“ _It’s not perfect, but maybe it will at least make things easier. Sturges fixed it up a little, covered up all those sharp bits on the hand with some steel, and made silicone coverings for any exposed wires at the elbow and wrist as well. Let us know if it does you any good._

_We’ve also thought to include a few other things to make your stay a little more bearable, as well. Mac agreed to part with his comic book collection, so long as every page comes back just the way he left them, so you have some light reading to do. Cait gathered ten bowling pins, and we had to debate whether it was worth sending you a heavy bowling ball on top of everything else. In the end, she just settled on her Blast Radius board game. Piper found an old puzzle book, and Preston found a Rubix Cube._

_For Hancock and Deacon, it was really a struggle. We know Hancock doesn’t share your guys’s same interests, and Deacon doesn’t have that many personal items. After a bit of thinking, though, Deacon settled on making some riddles for the both of you to solve, and Hancock went out and found two gloves and a baseball. Don’t play near anything fragile!_

_On top of all that, Nick worked nonstop one night on some sort of instruction manual and then just… plopped his guitar at the bottom of the box. We assume it’s something for you, Danse. The old Synth’s gone quiet ever since he left you at the Vault. And then Shaun put in a package for Kori, when she’s able to open it. It’s for her eyes only, apparently. Somehow, Dogmeat seemed to get what was going on as well, and stuffed a teddy bear in the box just before we closed it up. Poor pup has no idea what’s become of his master._

_Maybe this will help her recovery go by a little faster. She’ll have things to remember us all by, at the very least. Heavens knows we all miss her and we’re worried about her, but with you two there to support her, we’re sure she feels right at home.”_

 

Danse sighed and flipped to the next couple of pages, looking up to Kori and wishing with every fiber of his being that she were awake for this.

 

_“Now, about the Commonwealth… we suppose the big thing to report is that McDonough is no longer mayor of Diamond City. Turns out, he was a Synth all along, and he went haywire when the Institute went sky high. Piper, Hancock, and Nick took care of that mess. The citizens are still trying to figure out who should be the next mayor, but once Ghouls started sneaking in to see the commotion for themselves… the town was surprisingly peaceful about it. There were a few remarks, but not one fight has erupted yet. Whether this is a sign of a new Diamond City or not, we have yet to tell, but for now, the city is the most relieved and peaceful it’s ever been._

_As for the rest of us, the Minutemen are being hailed as the Heroes of the Commonwealth, much to Maxson’s annoyance. Their flag is flying in Diamond City’s walls, and anyone that even looks vaguely like one of them is getting the royal treatment. Preston is doing his best to keep it from getting to everyone’s heads, but it’s been a struggle. Hopefully the whole jamboree will die down relatively quick. It’s nice, but we all know what happened to the last group of people that let their power get to their head._

_The Brotherhood of Steel, on the other hand, are having their power and authority in the Commonwealth questioned now more than ever, despite their participation in the whole thing. It’s almost sad. Almost. But Maxson’s hissy-fit negates any sympathy we would have had. He’s pulling his soldiers out today from the Castle, even though Kori isn’t here. He just told us to tell her to go to the Prydwen at the nearest possible convenience, but honestly, they really should just leave at this point. The Commonwealth doesn’t want them here anymore; they’ve overstayed their welcome. They ought to be careful-- people are starting to realize that those who started out as nothing can grow into something great._

_Last thing we have to report is… Sturges is very, very distraught about what happened. He’s only thankful he risked his life long enough to give Kori one last relay before ducking out himself. He’ll never forgive himself for the glitch, though it had nothing to do with him. It was just unfortunate circumstance. He sends his thoughts and prayers, and wants Kori to know that she’s in his thoughts every moment of the day._

_What we all went through together changed not just the Commonwealth, but us, too, as its people. Despite being in a cushy vault, we’re sure that whatever you guys are going through in Kori’s recovery can’t be easy. We’ll send another messenger in a few days with another update, and it’d be really nice to hear from you about how things are on your end, since none of us can get in._

_Whatever you do, however long it may be until we meet again, stay good to each other, and take it easy. We won the hardest fight of our lives; we’ve earned the right to rest. You’re earned the right to breathe easy again. The celebrating can wait for when we’re all reunited. Until then, take care._ ”

 

The letter was signed by every one of Kori’s friends and companions, and a few names that Danse didn’t recognize. Even Maxson’s signature was there, and to his pleasant surprise, Haylen’s was as well. Danse reorganized the papers into their proper order, before looking over at Kori once again. Still, she slept, undisturbed by Danse’s reading, or the rustling of objects in the background, of Austin roughly strumming the old guitar and Curie dropping the board game in fright. The woman cursed in French as she took the instrument from Austin and offered him the Rubix Cube instead.

“Was there another letter or two in there?” Danse called across the room to the woman.

“Yes, _oui_. I was thinking we could read them together? I was listening when you read that one-- I have the arm here.”

“We’ll ask Dr. Forsyth about it the next time he’s in. For now, leave it on his desk.” Danse placed the letter back inside of its envelope before standing.

“Your friends sent you guys a bunch of neat things!” Austin exclaimed, still fiddling with the Rubix Cube. “I’ve never seen anything like this before! Man, you guys are so lucky.”

Danse picked up the guitar, and strummed out a chord, before smirking softly.

“Yeah. We are.”

 

* * *

 

Dr. Forsyth examined the Synth arm with a furrowed brow, scratching his chin. “We’ve salvaged Synth parts before, whether from our own excursions or from outsiders trading scraps… but we’ve never considered using their parts for prosthetics.”

“Is it possible?” Danse scooted forwards in his chair closer to the desk.

“Well…” The doctor peered into the shoulder part of the arm, squinting all the while. “If I could widen this hole, here, for her to slip what’s left of her arm into… and then some electrodes on both her shoulder blade and her deltoid, and what’s left of her tricep and bicep… yes… yes, I think that is something I could do. It’s a bit more technical than I’m used to, but nothing I can’t manage with a little time and effort. Let me talk to some of our mechanics about making space for Kori’s arm in here, and I’ll get back to you with the results.”

“Thank you, doctor. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it.”

Dr. Forsyth nodded, but it was grave. “Keep in mind, this will only mean anything if things turn out positively. We’re still at a point where we don’t know what her recovery is going to be like. My hope is that she’ll be able to use this at all.”

“I understand.”

The doctor took a hold of the arm in both hands before exiting the room. With Curie out of the room currently, Danse was left alone. Slowly he stood, his body protesting at the movement. He hadn’t slept well in days because of his shoulder, and he was certain it reflected on his face. Though, part of the problem was he had done most of his sleeping in the chair by Kori’s bed. He knew that the moment he settled down in that chair again he’d be asleep. Partially, that was the plan, but another part of him was dreading the aftermath in the morning.

Just as he was about to take his seat, gentle hands were around his waist, leading him away.

“Ah ah ah,” Curie chided, “not tonight, Danse. You will sleep in your _bed_ room, in your _bed!_ ”

The ex-Paladin groaned. “Curie, please, I’m fine. Don’t make me leave her.”

“Kori will not be going anywhere. That shoulder of yours is under stress, and overall, _you_ are under stress. Far too much, might I add!” She picked up Nick’s guitar and letter and handed it to Danse as she continued to push him out. “You can take this with you, though. But either way, you are going to go to your room and _rest!_ ”

“Can I at least tell her goodnight?”

The woman’s insistent pushing slowed, at that. Curie dropped her arms with a sigh, and took a step back.

“Yes, very well.”

Danse carefully set the guitar against the wall, and dragged his feet back over to where Kori lay still. He took a seat in the chair next to her and moved it closer. It didn’t matter that Curie was in the room; he wasn’t discreet when he took a hold of Kori’s hand, and kissed the tips of her fingers.

“Goodnight, my soldier. My sunshine. My love.”

When Danse stood and turned around, Curie’s cheeks were dusted a light pink. She glanced away, and bit her lip.

Danse approached her quickly. “Is something wrong?”

“Does she know, Monsieur?”

Danse froze.

“... no. She does not.

“Why?” Curie sounded heartbroken, as if Danse had just slapped her across the face. When her gaze flicked up to his, they were full of cold anger. "Why would you hide from her like this for so long, after all this time?"

The ex-Paladin fought to find words, and failed.

“I… I don’t know.”

He brushed past her as she remained statue still, stiff with infuriation. Danse left moments later, guitar and note in hand. In the safety of his room, once he’s shuttered the blinds on his window, Danse let his walls fall. He cursed, picking up a metal tray and tossing it across the room before tearing his hands through his hair.

Curie was right. _Why_ . He waited, and waited, and he never told her. Never told her explicitly, at least, and now, it really may have been too late. He had no one to blame but himself, and it infuriated the hell out of him. _Why didn’t you tell her_.

Danse clenched his fists, and shook. Just when he felt ready to fall apart, he saw the scar on his left arm. It had completely healed, but it was long and deep, deeper now that he was straining his muscles. It had been the first time he’d really paid it any mind. Curiously, he took his right index finger, and allowed it to trace along the length of the scar. Slowly, the motion caused him to relax, and Danse took a deep breath to keep himself from blacking out.

His shoulder ached from the strain and stress, and Danse sat down at the table in the room with a huff. From his pocket, he fished out some Med-X, and injected himself with a little. Once the medicine began to do its work and the pain ebbed away, he sniffed, and grabbed the guitar and Nick’s note. Having not read it yet, he opened it up with a sigh.

 

“ _Danse_ ,

 

 _I’m going to guess from the radio silence that things aren’t good. Maybe that’s just this old paranoid Synth being worried sick about the both of you. Most everyone out here is holding out hope, but there was something about the way Kori was limp against you that just doesn’t sit right with me. So I’m not holding out hope that things are good right this moment, but I will hope and pray that things will get better. At the very_ least _I’ve got to have faith in that things will one day be okay. It’s how I got this far, after all. It’s why there are still good people in the world._

_I’ve been staring at this paper for hours now, though, and I can’t think of anything to tell you. That is, except for why I sent you my guitar._

_I don’t know if you play, I never asked. There wasn’t time or opportunity. But some deep part of me remembered… Jenny loved it when I would play for her. Part of the reason we fell in love, actually. Summer nights on my apartment balcony, strumming softly with half-eaten chinese takeout on the patio table. And there she would be, across the complex, with her window open and listening to me play._

_I’m no musician, but I’ve composed a couple tabs for some songs I remember from heart for you to try out. Vocals, too. Don’t know if you sing, either. I don’t know if I really thought this through, but at the very least, you could give it a try, see if it passes the hours for you like I know it does for me._

_I love you, Danse. I hope you’re all safe and okay. Come home soon._

 

_Nick.”_

 

Dansee set down Nick’s letter carefully, before reaching inside of the envelope and pulling out more paper. Sure enough, there were tabs for several songs, waiting to be learned. The ex-Paladin figured Nick hadn’t really considered Danse’s broken shoulder, but at the same time, Danse figured that he’d been taking it easy enough and had enough Med-X to play for just a _little_ bit.

Little did Nick know, guitar was one of the ways he used to make caps while living in Rivet City. Danse made a selection out of the pieces provided, and tested out the E major chord before jumping in.

 

“ _We built our home out on the slopes,_  
_Pompeii beneath, she lay above,_  
_And how she haunted our home,  
How she haunted our home._

 _And you were a God in my eyes,_  
_Above the clouds, above the skies._  
_You were a God in my eyes,  
You were a God._ ”

 

The first few chords were a struggle, but the more he got the pattern, the more he was able to speed up. There was a distant ache in his shoulder, but he ignored it in favor of this much-needed distraction.

Danse was homesick, and worried to death. Sleep would not come easy here, alone, and he knew it. He needed the sound to fill the silence, and the aching of his heart, and his doubt of what was to come.

 

“ _Don’t cry, hold your_  
_Head up high; she would_  
_Want you to. She would  
Want you to please_

 _Just don’t cry, hold your_  
_Head up high; she would_  
_Want you to. She would  
Want you to…_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Bear's Den: "Above the Clouds of Pompeii."](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7yuaAEWIwI)


	30. Chapter 30

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gentle reminder that if you enjoy my writing, a [writing request](http://dylawa.tumblr.com/writing-requests) would be real nice!

A month and a week was spent in Vault 81 doing nothing but waiting. Passing the time, and pacing, and waiting. Danse was in mental agony the whole time, but he refused to leave Kori. He refused to leave the vault without knowing if the one time he would leave would be when he lost her.  The vault dweller slept on, like a woman in a glass coffin Danse had once read about. Like a princess in a tower, but there was no dragon to slay. An innocent trapped under a spell, with no cure. Even as her surgery scars healed and the swelling of her face ceased, Kori could not be woken.

Both Curie and Austin did what they could in order to keep Danse engaged and patient throughout it all. After the ex-Paladin had read through all of MacCready’s comics and solved all of Piper’s puzzles and Deacon’s riddles, Austin brought as many games as he could find. Some of the other children even worked up the courage to speak with the rugged outsider. After all, if Curie and Austin both liked him, he couldn’t be bad, right?  They taught him hopscotch, which had previously been a foreign game to him, and they all convinced him to keep playing even when he continued to fall down. Mostly he did it just because all of the laughing, while embarrassing, was an angelic sound after all he had suffered through.

The adults, as well, did their best to include Danse. They asked him for help with small errands, so that he was at least walking around and not stuck in a single room wondering what to do with himself. Horatio even went as far as to pretend to lose his scissors so Danse would have to hunt the whole vault for another pair. Anything they could think of, they would offer it to him, and every time without fail, Danse would agree to help.

But despite everything the vault dwellers attempted to help Danse, it still proved to be insufficient. The man was a natural born soldier, and he ached to wander the Commonwealth again, or at the very least have some hard manual labor to distract him. So, after receiving clearance from the Overseer and Dr. Forsyth for his shoulder, Danse was allowed to work on the reactor with Bobby and Tina De Luca. It seemed to do the trick-- enough so that he could comfortably settle into the vault’s routine, at the very least.

All the while, Curie and Danse continued to exchange letters with the outside world. The Minutemen and Kori’s companions were finally updated about the state of her health, and more letters poured in expressing great distress about the tragic turn of events. Multiple times, Hancock and Deacon were turned away at the vault door despite their insistence that they be allowed inside to confirm the situation for themselves. It took Curie’s intervention to finally convince them that, even though they could not come in to see her, that Kori was stable, and now it was only a matter of waiting.

And so wait they did.

Midway through the second month, Curie approached Danse with a plate of food, descending the stairs into the reactor room carefully. The ex-Paladin wiped sweat from his brow and thanked her, before the two sat down together to eat. She stole the muttfruit from his plate as he dove into his sandwich like a man starved.

“Is the reactor stable?”

“According to Tina De Luca, yes. Bobby hasn’t been much help, unfortunately.”

“Well, it is a good thing that you are here, then,” Curie giggled, patting Danse’s knee. “Everyone has taken quite a liking to you. You _are_ very likable, you know.”

Danse smiled around a mouthful of ham and cheese, and bumped his now-healed shoulder playfully against Curie’s. “I’m trying to be.”

“Oh, you do not have to try at all! Don’t be silly! You are very likable because you  _ are _ a likable person, not because you are pretending to be one.”

“Well, I haven’t always been this way. You know this.”

The Synth woman nodded solemnly at that. “Yes. This is true. But you have made such a remarkable change over the past few months, it would be hard for me to believe, if I were meeting you for the first time, that you had ever hated people like me, or Hancock. Maybe perhaps the Brotherhood had not drilled their ideology into your mind as deeply as they had wished.”

“I’m beginning to think that as well.” Danse took another bite of his sandwich. “If I’d been properly brainwashed like so many of my other brothers and sisters, it’s very likely we wouldn’t be sitting here having this conversation.”

“Oh, but I hate to think of that!” Curie exclaimed. She took a hold of Danse’s arm in false panic. “Please, do not up and leave me! Poor little Curie could not handle the heartbreak!”

Danse choked on his sandwich as he laughed, and Curie giggled right alongside him. Once they had calmed down, the ex-Paladin took a sip of water to battle the stickiness of his throat.  “Any update on Kori since I last hovered over her?”

“Unfortunately, no,” the Synth woman sighed. “But she is not getting worse, so I am still hopeful. She may be stable enough that we may be able to find a way to sustain her on our own, if we run out of time here. It would be very difficult, and it is likely that we would fail… but it would be enough to give her just a few more weeks, if we so wanted to make the effort. I know I do, but the supplies… it is a heavy cost.”

And then Danse wished he hadn’t eaten, because a sick feeling washed over him at the thought. “We’ll discuss our options if things start looking grim. For now, we’ll keep contributing to the vault, and hope the Overseer shows a little mercy.”

“Oh, but Gwen is so very kind. I am certain she would allow us three months, if we continued to work as hard as we are now. But beyond that, I think we would be outstaying our welcome.” Curie bit into her muttfruit and quickly wiped the juices from her cheeks before they could drip. “For now, we  _ must  _ remain hopeful. And  _ please  _ promise me that you will eat dinner  _ before  _ you come in to see Kori this evening?”

Danse laughed a little, resting his arms on his knees. “Okay. Promise.”

He jolted his head back in surprise when a pinky was shoved in his face.

“Pinky swear!”

It had become an inside joke between them; Austin had shoved his own pinky towards Curie and asked the same thing, but she had misunderstood his request, and said to Austin’s pinky, “I swear to sit with you at dinner.”

And so, Danse leaned forwards, and spoke to Curie’s finger. “I swear to eat dinner before coming to the medical wing.”

“Good!” The Synth woman stood, and patted Danse on the head. “Well, I shall leave you to your work then. Please remember to wear the appropriate safety gear!”

Danse waved Curie away and stood slowly himself. After placing his helmet back on his head, he returned to work. Tina waved him over with a flick of her wrench, and he didn’t leave her waiting, knowing from previous experience that she was not a patient woman.

 

* * *

 

As with every day, Danse entered the medical clinic prayed for a miracle, for Kori to sit up in bed and to greet him with her trademark smile. Sadly, no such instance occurred. However, Austin was present, and he was sitting by Kori reading her a book. All around her were get well cards, from both friends and vault children alike, and on the bed just next to her was her refitted and finished prosthetic arm, waiting to be applied.

“... ‘ _And not one will know of the war, not one, Will care at last when it is done. Not one would mind, neither bird nor tree If mankind perished utterly; And Spring herself, when she woke at dawn, Would scarcely know that we were gone._ ’”

Danse propped himself against the doorframe as he listened to the little boy stumble through the words. When he finished, he looked over to Kori, and moved the book so that it was in front of her face as he pointed at the words.

“It’s by Sara Teasdale. See? She was dead long before the Great War though. Look at the year she died! 1933! That’s a long time ago! Over 300 years! Why are we reading things so old like that? I bet you would know. Will you tell me when you wake up?”

At that point, Danse walked into the room, and he ruffled Austin’s hair and stood behind his chair. “I’m sure she’d be delighted to, Austin.”

“Hey Danse!” the boy exclaimed excitedly, bouncing in his seat to angle his head to see the ex-Paladin. “Can I ask you a question?”

“You can always ask me anything, Austin.” He moved around to grab another chair, and brought it over so that he was sitting next to Austin. “What do you want to know?”

The little boy bounced excitedly. “Can you tell me about how you and Kori met? She never told me that! I hadn’t seen her for a while, and then you were here out of the blue. How do you know each other?”

Danse leaned back in his chair and sighed. The question shouldn’t have elicited as much emotion in him as it did, and yet his chest constricted tightly at the echoes of war cries and gunfire and splattering Ghoul brains.  “Well, as I told you before, I was once a Brotherhood of Steel soldier. It was when I was positioned at the Cambridge police station. Half of my team had perished, and the two allies I had left were gravely wounded.”

“How’d they get hurt?”

“Well, Rhys had suffered lacerations to his chest and stomach from a Feral Ghoul, and Haylen was just looking out for him, so… I suppose she wasn’t injured. But the point is, I was the last man standing. I was wearing my Power Armor, so I was protected, but even still, things looked grim. I was the only one out of the three of us actively fighting, and the swarm of Feral Ghouls was just too great for me to tackle on my own.”

“How many were there? A hundred?”

Danse chuckled. “More like fifty, but when you’re faced with that many by yourself, it sure can  _ feel  _ like a hundred or more.”

“How did you kill them all?”

“I didn’t. I absolutely could not have done it all on my own. You see, Austin, it was very likely that I was going to die there… but then, just when all hope seemed lost, two shots rang out from the darkness. Several Ghouls went down, and I was left standing still in shock.”

Austin was quiet, now, but his eyes were aglow and his smile glistening as he listened.

“Out of nowhere, a woman leapt from the shadows, in nothing but a ratted old vault suit and some mismatched Wasteland armor. She gave a heroic battle cry as she swung her bat into the head of a Ghoul, and just before another could take a chunk out of her neck, she whirls around, draws a pistol faster than you can blink, and shoots him right  _ here _ .”

Danse points his finger into the space between Austin’s eyebrows, and the little boy's eyes sparkle in fascination.

“I was astounded. Amazed, dare I say. A vault dweller, taking on so many Ghouls without fear, without hesitation. Her bravery was inspiring. So I recompose myself, shook off the haze of exhaustion, and jumped back into battle right alongside her. With our combined efforts, those Ghouls were no match for our might.”

“Wow…” Austin blinked slowly, dreamily, before jumping up. “You guys are so cool! Kori’s told me about all her other friends, but you and her seem to get along the best! Is that right? Is Kori your best friend?”

Danse paused.

“Kori is… a wonderful woman. A trustworthy companion, flawlessly faithful, and stunning in everything that she does. I’d say she’s more than my best friend, but… I don’t have the word for it. I'm not sure what I want to say.”

“That’s okay; I get what you mean,” the boy assured Danse. “It’s hard to find the words you mean to say sometimes. I thought it was just a little kid problem, but it’s nice to know that grown-ups struggle with it, too. That makes me feel a little better.”

“In that case, I’m glad I could help.” Danse beamed at the boy, before Dr. Pensky hissed from the doorway and interrupted their conversation.

“Austin! Bed, young man!”

“Oop, stayed up too late. I hope you sleep well, Danse.”

Austin had fled from the room before Danse even had the chance to tell him goodnight himself. The Dr. stayed in the doorway until Austin slipped past her, before offering Danse a small, friendly wave. The ex-Paladin chuckled at the boy’s seemingly boundless energy, before turning his attention back to Kori.  Still, she slept on, face relaxed, yet so empty. Danse rested his head in his hand as he stared at her, before he closed his eyes.

He could remember that day now like it was yesterday.

 

* * *

 

_ Two shots rang out in the darkness. Four Ghouls dropped dead. _

_ Danse’s eyes widened at the sight, and frantically, he searched the darkness beyond the police station for the sniper while there was a break in battle, to no avail. Whoever was out there, friend or foe, could not be seen in the low light. With Haylen and Rhys out for the count, Danse couldn’t take any chances. _

_ “Hunker down!” he shouted back to them. “There’s an unknown gunman out there; I don’t have visual.” _

_ Wide eyed, Haylen nodded, still doing her best to tend to Rhys. _

_ And then, out of the blue-- or, rather, out of the blackness-- she had come. A flash of blue and gold, plated in rusted silver and bronze, like a Greek warrior of old. The nails in the wood of her bat were sharp and crusted, and she bared her teeth like a snarling wolf as she jumped over the barrier and slammed the weapon into a Ghoul’s head. The Feral’s head snapped like a twig, hanging loose only by the skin still keeping it attached before it fell. _

_ Behind her, another rose, foaming at the mouth and seeking revenge. But in a flash of movement Danse could hardly comprehend, the woman drew a pistol from her hip, and without looking, placed the weapon between the Feral’s eyes and fired. The creature quickly fell dead, and those that remained took a moment to assess this new threat. _

_ Danse was the only one left standing, but regardless, he shouted out: “Civilian in the perimeter! Watch your fire!” _

_ The woman-- she was dark skinned, he realized suddenly-- dropped her bat, and drew another pistol from her other hip. She began to back up towards Danse, shooting at Ferals left and right as she did so. He himself reopened fire, mindful of the small woman now approaching him for backup. _

_ “Go back to  _ sleep,  _ you assholes,” she snarled, voice rasping and yet somehow smooth, all at the same time. _

_ Throughout the battle, Danse watched the new arrival carefully, for any sign of misdirected hostility, but her sights remained set only on the Ferals swarming them. She does a double-take to her left, and takes a rough hold of Danse’s arm, using his weight to throw her body out to shoot at a Ghoul drawing too close to Haylen and Rhys. She spins around his front with a grace Danse had not seen in the Wasteland before and tosses the two of them a stimpack before jumping right back into the battle. _

_ “They know how to pick out the weak,” she warned Danse, rushing forwards to take a hold of her bat and knocking out two Ghoul’s legs. Danse takes advantage of the opportunity and lands two clean headshots on them. _

_ “I’ve trained to deal with Ferals; I’m well aware.” _

_ “Wouldn’t have known it from this situation I’ve found you guys in.” _

_ “Unfortunate chance, not common circumstance.” _

_ “Put your money where your mouth is and maybe I’ll be impressed.” _

_ Challenged and infuriated, Danse steels his nerves, and with the stranger’s help, they eliminate the last of the Feral Ghouls with relative ease. _

_ In the quiet afterwards, Danse takes a moment to collected himself, calming both his anger and his adrenaline, before moving to address the woman who had jumped in to save the day with seemingly no reason other than to smash Ghoul skulls. Or perhaps it was caps she desired. A mercenary of sorts. In this lawless place, Danse wouldn’t be surprised. _

_ “I appreciate the assistance, civilian. But what’s your business here?” _

_ The woman gave Danse an unimpressed look, and placed her hands on her hips. “Pest exterminator. I heard you had a feral problem.” _

_ Ah. Sarcasm. Danse’s favorite. He frowned down at her. “Evading my questions is a surefire way to get yourself ejected from the compound. Are you from a local settlement?” _

_ “No, I’m from Vault 111.” _

_ “You’re a vault dweller?” Danse blinked in surprise, before realizing how dumb his question had been. The woman before him was wearing a vault dweller suit. Of  _ course  _ she was a vault dweller. Her face reflected the stupidity he felt, and he shook his head. Though, the more he looked at her, the more he realized she could have passed for a regular resident of the Commonwealth. She had the recent wounds and the dirt and grime for it, though he couldn’t deny there was a certain glimmer in those green eyes that was too innocent. Too new. “Most people wouldn’t admit to such a thing. I appreciate your honesty.” _

_ That caused the woman to smile. To Danse’s surprise, she stuck out a hand, leaning on her bat with the other. _

_ “Well, on the topic of honesty, in that case, I’m Kori Farnsworth. And I just saved your goddamn life. You’re welcome.” _

_ Despite his disapproval at the terseness of her introduction, Danse took her hand and shook it. _

_ “Paladin Danse. Brotherhood of Steel.” _

 

* * *

 

The ex-Paladin startled awake, at first confused and disoriented from his dream, but it took only a moment to recall everything. Not a Paladin. Not at Cambridge, or the Boston Airport. No, this was the reality presented before him. A fully functioning vault, away from his friends, sitting before his lover in perpetual sleep.

He turned to look at Kori, and heaved a great sigh. Still unconscious. Hadn’t even budged. There were no more drips in her arm, and her left shoulder at this point had healed enough that it no longer required bandaging. Her face was peaceful, serene, and she looked almost as flawless as the day she’d jumped into Cambridge. Even in deathlike slumber, she looked alive.

Danse checked the clock on the wall. It was early in the morning. Curie had let him spend the night, it seemed. His stiff body would hate him for it when he left to go back to work, but for now he was grateful. Waking up to seeing Kori’s face, even like this, was a small blessing. The ex-Paladin let his elbows rest on the edge of the bed, and he took a hold of Kori’s hand in his. Cold, but not lifeless. The low temperature still made his gut churn uneasily.

“There are… so many things I wish I’d told you. And so many things I wish you’d told me. All these adventures you’ve been on, all of these people you’ve met and helped… it’s astounding, what you did with your time before you met me. Incredible. I wish, so much, that I could have been there with you. That I could have accompanied you and been there to witness all of the wonderful things you helped to accomplish.”

Danse closed his eyes, and shook his head.

“There’s so much I regret. Too much. The fights, the disagreements that pushed us apart. I wish-- I’ll always wish-- I could go back in time. Slap myself for being an idiot. But part of me knows that, no matter what I could change, I’d  _ never  _ be satisfied. That’s the kicker, isn’t it? You think of all the things you could have done different, but you know that you’d never be completely happy with any change, knowing what you do now. And the thing about regretting the things we’ve lost… it doesn’t do us any good. We can cry and complain all we want, but nothing will change. We have to accept what’s come to us, and move on.”

Kori’s hand grew warm and sweaty in his, but he continued to hold on.

“I know that’s easy for me to say. What I lost is far less drastic than what you lost, and nothing I could ever say or do would help me to understand the weight of everything that’s crashed into you all at once. But over the span of these nine long months, you’ve changed me into someone better. Someone who is patient and understanding, someone people even  _ like _ to be around and to interact with. That’s… foreign and new to me. And sometimes, it still scares me. Sometimes I worry about making a fool of myself, or slipping up and saying the wrong thing, and getting kicked all the way back to square one. But because of you… Because of the things you taught me, I can finally say that I’m comfortable in my identity. I may not be human… but I’m alive. I’m alive, and that matters.”

Danse’s grip tightened as he was overwhelmed with emotion.

“And it’s not  _ fair _ that you’ve been reduced to this. Teetering on the edge of being dead and alive, after everything you’ve done not just for me, but for the Commonwealth, the  _ world _ . This… this isn’t how any of this should have ended up. It’s not  _ fair _ . And I’m  _ sorry  _ I couldn’t protect you, after all the times you protected me. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.”

Danse let his head fall, hanging low between his shoulders as he trembled.

“... and… since… when… have I… needed saving… Danse?”

He didn’t have to take a moment to register the voice he was hearing. Danse stood up sharply, releasing Kori’s hand and stumbling backwards. The chair fell over and clattered to the floor noisily behind him, and his eyes went wide as he stared down at Kori’s face.

Her eyes were open. Her words had been muffled, and the responding clench of her fingers around his had been weak, but her eyes were  _ open _ , and beneath that oxygen mask, she was smiling.

“Don’t move, don’t move,” he shouted, turning to run and tripping over the fallen chair in the process. As soon as he had righted himself, Danse broke into a sprint towards where Curie and Dr. Forsyth were sharing quarters. He ran down the hall full speed, until he skidded to a stop at the door, and banged desperately against it, head spinning so fast he thought he was going to pass out.

“Dr. Forsyth! Curie! Awake, they-- Kori, she’s awake! She’s awake! Please!”

Curie was out of the room in just a split second, throwing on her doctor’s coat over her pyjamas, She roughly brushed past Danse and broke into a run herself. Her expression was solely business, strictly professional, but Danse could see the tense excitement hiding in her shoulders.

When she ran into the medical wing, her eyes went wide and she rushed forwards. “No, no no! Madame Kori, remain in bed! I have not assessed your condition yet!”

“I’m fine,” Kori urged her, having already tossed her knees over the side of the bed. She was staring at the stump of left arm she had left with wide eyes, before planting her feet on the floor. “Help me get up.”

“No no Kori!” Curie rushed to her side and placed a hand on her chest, gently pushing her back onto the bed. “We must ease you into it. This is much too quick.”

The vault dweller fixed Curie with a hard, stern look just as Dr. Forsyth joined them, standing in the doorway with Danse. When Kori spoke, it was demanding, not to be ignored. “Listen, I don’t know what happened at the _Castle_ , but I  _ need  _ to get back out there. The Institute _needs_ to be taken down. I need your help getting back on my feet so I can get this done.  _ Please  _ Curie, there’s so much more at stake here.”

It was at that moment the doctor froze up, eyes wide and mouth uncertain what to say. “I… M-madame Kori--”

Danse came to stand next to her, concern deeply etched into his face. He place reassuring hands on both of Curie's shoulders. “Kori… the Institute  _ is  _ destroyed. That was the last thing we did before this all happened. There was a malfunction in the relay. That’s how you lost your arm, and we only managed to fix it just before you were blown up along  _ with  _ the Institute. Do you not… remember?”

Kori looked offended. “Of  _ course  _ I don’t. I would know if we’d done something like that. I’d remember. Why are you lying to me?”

“But you don’t remember how you lost your arm.” He stepped forwards boldly, and Curie hissed at him even as he trembled. “Or how you got here. Kori, you were in a coma. We’ve been here, in Vault 81, for nearly two months. The explosion nearly  _ killed  _ you, you had a concussion.”

“Why are you making this up!?” Kori shouted at him, shaking and lip quivering. “I haven’t destroyed the Institute, we have to go, right now. You-- you’re lying to me because you don’t want me to go, is that it? Did Sturges find a way in? You'd only lie like this if he found a way in.”

Danse set his lips and left abruptly, back to Curie’s temporary desk, even as the woman protested. He rummaged around in her drawers before finding what he was searching for and turning to Dr. Forsyth.

“I need a Pip-Boy,” he instructed him.

The doctor narrowed his eyes, but didn’t question the request, only leaving to grab the requested device. Danse hurried back to Curie and Kori, shoving something into the vault dweller’s hand. She narrowed her eyes down at it.

“What’s this?” She began to struggle to open the small package with one hand.

“I haven’t opened it,” Danse informed her, “but I know what it is. It’s a holotape, and it’s from your son. Your _Synth_ son, still a child. He gave this to you as a gift or something.”

Curie took a rough hold of Danse’s arm and pulled him down close so she could lower her voice. “You are  _ agitating  _ her!” she harshly whispered, storms rolling in her eyes.

“I know what I’m doing,” he growled out in response, yanking away from her grasp. It was at that moment that Dr. Forsyth returned, a Pip-Boy in hand.

“We’d been working on making Kori a new one since she lost hers,” he informed them as he set it down in her lap. “Luckily, we managed to finish it just last week.”

The vault dweller narrowed her sights on the device, popping open the tape compartment and shoving the tape inside clumsily while she balanced the Pip-Boy in her lap. Shortly thereafter, the contents of the holotape began to play. The voice that greeted them was not the young Shaun they had been anticipating, however. Instead, the voice they heard was that of the older Shaun. Of Father.

_ “If you are hearing this, then whatever conflicts you and I have endured are over, _ ” the voice said, and Kori’s eyes widened imperceptibly. “ _ I have no reason to believe you'll honor the request I'm about to make, but I feel compelled to try anyway. This synth, this... boy. He deserves more. He has been re-programmed to believe he is your son. It is my hope that you will take him with you. I would ask only that you give him a chance. A chance to be a part of whatever future awaits the Commonwealth. _ ”

The tape ended far sooner than any of them seemed to want. Kori remained still, save for a raising of her right hand to touch gingerly at her left temple. The scar there was still tender, still fresh. Everyone watched as her face slowly dawned, and all color drained from her cheeks.

“... Shaun… Shaun, where is he?”

“He is still at the castle,” Curie assured her, taking a hold of Kori’s hand. “He is fine. He is safe.”

“Why isn’t he here?”

“The vault only has enough resources for just the three of us, and Shaun was too far away for us to have brought him. Not to mention, I think the sight of his mother in such poor condition would have broken his heart.”

Kori’s head drooped, before her eyes suddenly snapped open again. She turned her head to stare at her left arm-- or what remained of it-- and grasped at the empty space desperately. The gravity of the loss finally dawned on her. After a moment of mental struggle, she fell still.

“... I’m gonna be sick.”

Curie fled to grab something for Kori to puke into while Danse did just the opposite, surging forwards to take a seat and holding her hand while rubbing her back. The moment Curie rushed over with a garbage can, Kori vomited into it, entire body tensing and convulsing as she expelled nothing but stomach acid. The moment she finished, however, her breathing was quick as she hyperventilated, staring at her left stump as it moved and flailed, like she was trying to grab on to something, anything. In response, Danse took a hold of both of her arms, forcing her to stay still.

“Kori, listen to me,” he pleaded, and panicked pear-greens shot up to undisturbed umber. “I need you to breathe. I need you to take deep breaths. Breathe for me, okay? Focus on me. Eyes on me. Breathe with me.”

After a little more convincing, Kori managed to bring herself under control enough to listen to Danse. When he inhaled, she mimicked the motion of expanding her chest, but it took some time for her to actually copy his breathing pattern. The world devolved around them into nothing but white and distant static, and the sound of their breath between them. Clarity returned to Kori’s eyes, and Danse’s grip on her arms began to loosen.

“You’re okay,” he whispered. “Your heart’s still beating. You’re still here. You’re alive, and I’m here. I’m here, Kori.”

And when his hands snaked up to hold her face, her right hand came to hold his left. She let her head fall forwards, her forehead coming to rest against his, and they closed their eyes and their breath remained as one.

 

* * *

 

August was coming to a quick, quiet close in Sanctuary. In the middle of the road, Shaun, Hancock, and MacCready tossed a baseball between them, the young boy in a striped shirt and ratty jeans. Dogmeat soon ran over and begged to join, and Shaun reeled his arm back and threw the ball as hard as he could uphill, with an elated shout of, “Go get it, boy!”

The smell of cooked Mirelurk meat rose from the chimney of the community kitchen, and a moment later Cait emerged with a plate, eating quietly as she walked down the street. Deacon appeared from behind a house, and snagged a strip of the slippery food before bolting off with it. Cait shouted out indignantly at the theft and chased after him, but that only caused even more food to fly from her plate. Dogmeat, upon seeing the scraps, forewent the game of fetch and decided to have a snack instead.

At the residence closest to the entrance of Sanctuary, Nick, Codsworth, Piper, and Preston sat, while the old Synth read and Piper typed. The Mr. Handy let his internal radio play for them while he played a game of cards with the Minuteman leader. Preston examined his hand scrupulously.

“Hmm… got any… sevens?”

“Better luck next time, sir.”

Preston cursed, and drew a card from the deck at the center of the small table. Then, he cackled giddily, and tossed down four queens. “Got it!”

“Bollocks.”

Shaun bolted up to the four of them with his baseball in hand, gasping and panting for breath. The ruddy red of his cheeks caused the young boy to glow with life and energy. “Hey Mr. Garvey! Do you want to play catch with me and Hancock and Mac? Four is the best number for it.”

“You mind, Codsworth?”

“Not at all! By all means, please play with young Shaun. I approve wholeheartedly!”

Preston nodded his thanks to the bot, allowing Shaun to take him by the hand and lead him out into the street. Just as they were about to turn to join Mac and Hancock, the Sentry Bot suddenly spurred to life, single eye red and ablaze. It glanced around wildly, before setting its gaze down the bridge that lead out of Sanctuary.

Preston pulled away from Shaun, drawing his laser musket and squinting his eyes against the rising sun in search of whatever had spooked the bot. Hancock and MacCready, as well, came to stand by Preston’s sides. From the house, Nick stood, stepping off of the porch and joining in everyone’s staring. Shaun watched them all with confused eyes, and clung onto Preston's coat nervously.

Through the haze of heat radiating from the ground, three figures rose above the hill. The first, a pale woman with neatly kept short hair, had a sword slung over her shoulder, and lead the way. The second was a rugged man-- a soldier, in a leather jacket and a laser rifle at his hip, a guitar on his back. The third, another woman, dark of skin and limping slightly, stuck close to the soldier. The fabric of her long sleeved shirt around her left arm was loose, rippling in the wind, and the hand that poked out of the sleeve was metal, glinting in the sunlight.

The Sentry Bot took a moment to analyze the approaching people, before settling back down, and returning to dormancy. Preston broke into a broad grin.

“Well I’ll be damned.”

Shaun bolted past the group of adults, feet pounding against the wooden boards of the bridge. “Mom!” he shouted, stumbling and catching himself. “ _ Mom! _ ”

“I’m here baby, I’m here. I’m not going anywhere baby, slow down.” Her voice rasped, both from disuse and emotion as the young boy ran to her. Danse had to throw an arm out to prevent the little boy from tackling Kori, unsteady on her feet as she was. Once Shaun’s speed had been reasonably managed, Danse pulled back the barrier of his arm, and mother and son collided in a tangle of hugs and tears. Kori fell to her knees, and Shaun followed her, sobbing as he clung onto her.

“Mommy, Mommy are you okay? Where’s your arm Mom?”

“Don’t worry about it, baby,” she whispered, running her good hand through his hair. “Don’t worry baby, I’m okay. I’m here. I’m going to be okay.”

Word spread quickly around Sanctuary, and those who had not seen Kori and the others come over the hill were quick to approach. Hancock was the first to pull Kori up and into a crushing hug, and Danse swore that he had tears in his eyes, though he had previously thought Ghouls incapable of crying. The Ghoul spun her around and around, before setting her down a bit clumsily.

“When I heard you went under I thought--” He shook his head, and pulled back, holding her at arm’s length and biting his lip. “Shit, vaultie. Not a lot of people pull through that kind of hell.”

“But that’s just the thing, Hancock; I’m a vaultie.” She smiled and knocked his hat askew on his head, and he chuckled and sniffled before Deacon gently moved him aside. The Railroad spy removed his glasses and put them on Kori’s face.

“Looks like you’re resident badass now. Not that you weren’t before, but you’ve definitely stolen my spot on the list. But uh… I’ll need those back by this time tomorrow. Or tonight."

Deacon paused.

"Actually I’m gonna need those back now.”

Kori giggled as he took his glasses back from off of her head, and then he and MacCready hoisted her up on their shoulders. She squealed with surprise, before they started running into Sanctuary singing “ _ She’s a jolly good fellow _ .” Shaun, upon seeing his mother being carried around, tugged on Hancock’s coat until the Ghoul lifted the boy with a smirk and a roll of his eyes. The two hurried to catch up, Shaun giggling all the while. Curie shouted, demanding that they be careful with the still weak woman.

Danse followed the progression from a distance, smiling with his hands in his jacket pockets, until a hand grasped at the collar of his jacket and yanked him back. Before he could process who it was, a pair of chapped, dry lips were firmly planted on his. His eyes remained wide open, but soon he relaxed at familiar grey, cracked skin. He let one hand come up to cradle the side of Nick's face, and the other came to hold at the small of the Synth's back.

When Nick finally pulled back, he smiled at Danse in clear relief.

“Thought I’d never see you again, handsome, but you look like you’re doing better than ever. And Kori looks like she’s doing okay, too.”

Th ex-Paladin gazed over to where the woman was being carried up the street, Shaun by her side. Cait darted up to her with a burning branch and Kori held it above her head in her right hand while everyone else shouted. “It hasn’t been easy. It’s still not going to be easy. She’s barely got a grasp on how to work her new arm, and in a world like this… recovery is still a long road without a good end in sight.”

“But even with that in mind,” Nick reminded him, “the fact that she made it back here at all shows true strength. She’ll make it through this. She has Shaun, and she has her friends. And she has you.”

He looked over at Danse with an arched eyebrow, and Danse knew what Nick wanted to know. Had he told her? Danse shot Nick an apologetic look, and the old Synth sighed and folded his arms. He himself stared after the progression, and leaned against Danse softly.

“Point still stands,” he muttered, shuffling from one foot to the other. They watched in silence, for a moment, before Nick sighed, and looked up at Danse with clear disappointment. “You’re never going to tell her, are you, Danse? You’ll find one excuse after the other until she’s old and grey, and then you’ll have no time left.”

There was no use lying anymore, to Nick  _ or  _ to himself.

“I very well might.”


	31. Chapter 31

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys, please please please check out the writing requests page [here](http://dylawa.tumblr.com/writing-requests). It would really mean a lot to me. Or if you can't, at least spread the word about me as a writer.

Radio Freedom was broadcasted all around Sanctuary, hooked up to the announcement system so that the music echoed around every corner and in every house. Every kind of meat conceivable was cooked up and offered at the pavilion, though the tables and chairs had been moved to the space outside so that the floor was clear for dancing. Minutemen from several nearby settlements had come to visit, bringing their own children and stories of their exploits around the Commonwealth. Some others had arrived, as well-- a Ghoul family, with a little boy of their own, Travis Miles with a portable radio kit, Kent Connolly, Vadim and Yefim, among several others who seemed of some sort of significance to Kori, based on the way she greeted them.

Kori sat in the middle of it all, leg propped just to ease off any leftover pain as she sat comfortably in Mama Murphy’s chair. She beamed widely as she wore her Minuteman General’s coat and hat, a glass of wine in her right hand and a ceremonial sword in her mechanical left. The sharp end was pointed into the floorboards, more like a scepter than any weapon. Those that had traveled to Sanctuary showered her in praise and gifts, which were placed in a basket to her right. Preston made certain her cup was always filled and she was never surrounded by any more than three people at once, though he didn’t constantly hover. He mingled with the guests himself, but if the vault dweller seemed overwhelmed, he was there in a moment.

In the meantime, there was food and dancing and merriment all around. Shaun and some of the other boys tied tin cans to Dogmeat’s tail and sent him running throughout the neighborhood, and no one questioned or got involved when MacCready joined them. Deacon watched it all with a dreamlike expression-- even with the glasses covering his eyes, those who knew him knew that he was simply enamoured with the sniper at this point. Neither he nor Mac seemed to hide their affection towards one another anymore, especially now.

Hancock had found his own regal armchair, and had dubbed himself lieutenant general. After Preston informed him that  _ he  _ was lieutenant general, the Ghoul settled with major general, and amassed a small gathering of those eager enough to listen to his own retelling of the war against the Institute. He lured a few in with the promise of drugs, but still, his way of speaking did not cease to amuse.

“... and then, just when everything seemed at peace, not one, but  _ three  _ Deathclaws jumped from over the hills, surrounding General Farnsworth and her trustworthy Paladin. Their odds looked grim, low on ammunition and stimpacks and surrounded by nothing but murderous beasts and irradiated wasteland. But did they shy away? Did they hunker down and wait for the end? Never! The brave Paladin yanked two grenades from his pockets, while the vault dweller herself pulled out her trusty weapon-- the Last Resort…”

Piper, ever the busy woman, stalked around the various partygoers with pen and paper, furiously scribbling down anything that seemed to be of import. The focused crease in her brow grew only deeper as she began to run out of paper, but still she lurked around the edges of the crowds. At one point, Cait snatched her notebook out of her hands and read off a few headlines to Curie.

“What’s this then? ‘ _ Pickman: Legend or Horrid Reality _ ’? ‘ _ The Ugliest Mutt of the Commonwealth _ ’? ‘ _ U.S.S. Constitution Set to Sail Again _ ’? Sounds like you’re running out of stories there, Piper. If you wanted, I could go punch Hancock in the face and give you a  _ real _ article to write about. ‘ _ Crazed Irish Woman Picks Fight with Goodneighbor Mayor! _ ’”

“You will  _ not _ !” Curie shrieked, hitting Cait on the arm indignantly. “Poor Hancock is too drunk to defend himself! If he were sober, however…”

“Awe, look at you, Curie,” Piper praised her. “Never took you for the mediator type. Yeah, Cait, if you could wait for him to sober up  _ before  _ knocking his chair over, that’d be great.”

“I never said anything about tipping-- oh.  _ Oh _ . I like the way you think, Piper.”

MacCready poked his head around the corner. “I’ll help.”

Deacon poked his head up over Mac’s. “I’ll take Hancock’s side so it’s still fair. You gotta change my name though for the sake of anonymity, Piper.”

“I got you, Deacon, Don’t worry. Give me a good story, and I’ll make it worth all your guys’s while. Curie, you’ll be on standby?”

Curie gave them all a disgruntled sigh. “ _ Oui _ . Though I do not approve of this needless fighting, I know that you will not seriously harm each other, and I would not be able to stop it regardless. Just fight as fair as you can.”

“I’ll be sure to find a happy medium.” Cait pulled Curie in for a side hug, and Cait giggled as Curie smiled and rolled her eyes.

Codsworth hurried past them with a brand new glossy coat over his steel plating, a tray of drinks in one arm. He came to a stop before the vault tech salesman from 200 years ago, and the two laughed and shared a personal toast, despite the Mr. Handy being unable to drink. Nick swept by and took up Codsworth’s drink for himself, though only out of instinct. He made a face down at the small cup, before passing it to Ellie.

“Old habits die hard,” he mumbled as she giggled and took a sip.

“Or never at all, Mr. Valentine.”

“Yeah, that’s true too.”

“Though I’m certain you’ll break the habit someday.”

“The day I manage  _ not  _ to accidentally pour myself a glass of something I can’t drink will be the day Sturges gets a car in working condition again.”

“I wouldn’t put it past him. He seems… intelligent.” Ellie’s eyes scanned the crowd for the aforementioned man, and upon spotting him, she swooned lightly before tipping back her drink.

“Huh. Never took you for the type to enjoy rugged men, Ellie.”

“I appreciate strong  _ smart  _ men, Nick. Sturges is both, from what I know.”

“Not exactly  _ book  _ smart, but if you’ve got a hole in your wall, sure.” The old Synth patted her back before stepping away. “Keep out of trouble, missy.”

He stepped into the pavilion, stopping partway upon spotting Danse in one corner talking to a group of strangers, and Kori still in her chair, though she was beginning to look increasingly bored. Those who danced didn’t seem to keep her attention, and Danse, as well, didn’t seem entirely engaged in whatever conversation he was involved in. The woman with the orange hair seemed particularly interested in Danse, however, staring at him with glistening eyes. The old Synth slipped into an open space in Danse’s group with a clearing of his throat.

“Hope you kids don’t mind,” he said, “I need a word with this killer stud alone.”

The guys rolled their eyes while the girls giggled, and all of them missed the blush on Danse’s face as he was gently lead away. Before he could wander too far, however, the woman with orange hair called out to him, “Oh, Danse, just so you know… the Railroad’s always looking for new recruits, especially now with the sudden influx of Synths needing new places to go. We wouldn’t mind having you back.”

Danse blinked at the woman as she winked, before she returned to her conversation with the others; a part of him thought she looked familiar, but Nick had pulled him away before he could have the chance to ask if they had somehow met before.

“Is everything alright?” Danse asked, sipping on a bottle of beer as he eyed Nick.

“Oh, no, absolutely not.” Nick feigned panic as he gestured in Kori’s direction with a nod of his head. “The General is in grave danger. She’s dying of boredom, and I think the only suitable cure without dragging her away from her guests is dancing.”

The ex-Paladin paled, doing a double-take at the woman across the pavilion. “Nick, not only is she still unsteady on her feet, but I don’t dance. Very little, but I--”

“ _ She  _ dances.” Nick gently pried the beer bottle from Danse’s hand. “Listen, if you give her an excuse to get to her feet, she’ll lead and make you look good at the same time. Don’t worry about it. Just support her while she leads, and the atmosphere will take care of the rest.”

“What’s that supposed to mean--”

“Showtime!” Nick turned Danse around, and shoved him in Kori’s direction. The ex-Paladin stumbled, until he was face-to-face with the General herself. The two both blinked in surprise for differing reasons, before Danse hurried to straighten himself.

“Kori,” he coughed, rubbing his hands on his shirt. “I, uh… hello.”

“Hey.” The vault dweller looked Danse up and down with narrowed eyes. “Are you okay? I haven’t seen you all night.”

“I wanted to give you space to interact with all your adoring fans.” And that was the truth of it. “I hope I didn’t make the wrong call…”

“No, no, it’s been a help,” she admitted. “It’s… crazy, how many people have showed up.”

And then, her cheeks went crimson as she bowed her head.

“Honestly, I… I don’t remember half of them.”

Inwardly, Danse cringed, knowing her concussion had wrought more damage than anyone wanted to admit. But outwardly, he offered a consoling smile. “They’ve heard of your story. If they knew, I don’t think they’d blame you. You’ve seen so much.”

Kori laughed, though it was a bitter thing. The music ended as their conversation slipped into an awkward pause, and it was at that moment-- the worst possible moment-- that Danse offered his hand.  He realized his error too late, of course. There was no backing out now, especially since Koir was regarding his hand with equal parts curiosity and confusion.

“I, uh…” Danse struggled to find what he wanted to say. “I can’t dance.”

Kori furrowed her brow, and looked up at him, this time with concern. Before he could speak up again, she looked past him. Danse glanced back behind him towards where Kori was looking, but couldn’t see what had caught her attention.

“What is it?”

“Nick just hit himself in the face.”

Oh, good, Nick was listening in. Danse had to fix this situation, and fast. As the music started up again, he cleared his throat to grab Kori’s attention again.

“What I meant to say, is, I don’t know how to dance, and I was wondering if you could… teach me? I-- I know your leg isn’t the best for it at the moment, but I would be willing to support your body weight, and it would be a good excuse for you to get up and move around.”

He could  _ feel  _ the sweat trickling down his temple as Kori considered the strange request.

“Yeah. Sure. Let’s dance.” Her left hand took a hold of his, and he firmly grasped the metal, hoisting her to her feet. Their bodies slipped close together, her nose just inches from his lips as she maneuvered his hands around.

“Left hand on… no,  _ right _ hand on my waist, left hand holding mine. Yeah, like that.” Her left hand came to rest on his bicep, cool metal slipping on the fabric of his jacket for a moment before she found her grip. All Danse could think about was how close they were as he took a few careful steps back from the temporary throne, more towards the middle of the room. He tightened his grip on her as she steadied herself.

“Don’t let me go,” she informed him, “and move your feet how I move mine.”

Danse nodded. Orders to follow. He was good at that.

When Kori began to move, Danse followed her every step of the way, literally. Luckily, he had enough sense to be able to determine how to move his feet without staring at the floor between them. He instead focused on the bob and weave of her body before him in order to determine the movement of his feet, and while it was Kori pulling him around, he held her upright and firm.

He didn’t understand the importance of dancing. He didn’t see it as anything more than a social construct invented to humiliate those who could not do it, and to unnecessarily elevate those who  _ did  _ know how to a status of near nobility. But as he and Kori shared the dance floor, the world around them ebbed away. The world around them faded into a gentle blur of colors and white nose, and color returned to Kori’s cheeks and nose. The more they spun together, the more her eyes seemed to glitter and glow, and gradually, a smile began to creep onto her features. When she pulled herself closer to Danse, so that his lips were once again nearly brushing the tip of her nose, he forgot how to breathe for a few seconds.

“You’re a natural,” she laughed, and he remembered that he needed oxygen in order to survive, but more importantly, so that he wouldn't drop Kori.

“You’re a good teacher,” he replied.

“Me? Really? Damn, about time after all these months.”

“You’ve always been good at showing me new things,” he argued with a smile. When Kori blushed and looked down between them, Danse realized the implication of his words, and stammered. “I-- I mean, that is to say, you’ve taught me more about compassion, and-- and fighting for what’s right, and--”

“I’m messing with you, Danse. Relax.” She squeezed her left hand on his bicep gently to ground him. “I dunno… it’s weird. After all this time, all of the insanity of figuring everything out… this all feels like a dream. This party. Having my son, even if he’s… not my son… being home, with a dog, with my robot. Waking up in the morning and knowing there will be enough to eat because of the supply routes. And now here I am, dancing.  _ Dancing _ , after all this time. None of it feels  _ real _ . I feel like tomorrow, I’m going to wake up, pick up my rifle, and head back out into the unknown to fight for my life.”

Danse wrinkled his nose, and separated from his staring for just a moment to look all around them. Though none of what he saw registered in his mind, he pretended it had, before locking eyes with Kori again.

“There will be days where you’ll have to fight. I can’t deny that. But I can promise you that from this day forwards, things will be easier. Food will be easier to come by, supplies will be shared more freely between traders and settlers, people will work together in confidence… all because of you. You’ve made everything easier for everyone.”

Kori bit her lip. “I don’t know, Danse. Seems like I only swept in and fucked up everything for you. Think about it. Without me, you could still be on the Prydwen…”

Danse slowed Kori down a little. “Does that thought genuinely bother you?”

“Occasionally. I know I’ve made things better for a lot of people, but… sometimes it hits me harder than other times just how drastically I changed your life, and not necessarily for the better.”

The ex-Paladin stopped them entirely, still holding Kori up as he searched her eyes. For what, he wasn’t certain, but what he did find was self-doubt and regret. So much regret. He sighed through his nose, and released her right hand to tilt her chin up.

“I wouldn’t change anything that’s happened between us. Not one single thing.”

Danse began to drown in Kori’s eyes, when she said nothing, but she didn’t pull away. The only thing that yanked them apart was a distant crash, and a gravelly shout of “ **_MacCready!!!_ ** ”

Danse and Kori both turned towards the sound of the commotion, and all of a sudden, the world had returned to focus. Across the way, Hancock was struggling to his feat after his chair had been tilted over, and Deacon rushed to his side to help him up.

“What the hell, Mac? Not cool.” Deacon frowned, though it was clearly exaggerated, and as Cait and Mac both danced side by side and shot raspberries at the other two, Piper stood by and took notes on the whole commotion. “Hancock, you’re not gonna let Mac keep treating you like this, are you?”

“Hell no I ain’t, I’ve had it!” the drunken Ghoul snarled with a smile, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand once he was somewhat steady on his feet. Curie, who looked less than pleased as Hancock tackled the sniper to the ground, walked slowly to the group with a first-aid kit, ready to extend aid in the aftermath.

Danse didn’t realize Kori was pulling away until her metal hand left his arm. She limped backwards some distance, before offering up a small smile and a crook of her head.

“Thanks for that. That was… more fun than I thought it’d be. I’m gonna go ahead and sit back down. Try not to get yourself killed like MacCready.”

While Danse was disappointed, feeling that their dancing had ended far too soon, he let it go, not wanting to create an awkward situation. Well, any more awkward than it was now, at least. “Who do you think I am?” Danse asked, acting offended, and the vault dweller just laughed and shook her head before responding:

“Paladin Danse. Brotherhood of Steel. Hunter of Deathclaws. Slayer of Coursers. Loyal to a fault. Heart of gold. Defender of the Minutemen. And most importantly… a man I could not  _ possibly  _ live without.”

If her words had any visible effect on him, she did not comment on it. She only smiled, and turned to limp slowly back to her chair, where Preston greeted her with a can of water, leaving Danse bewildered and flustered in the middle of the dance floor.

 

* * *

 

The celebration ended at sometime around midnight, and despite the risk of mole rats or giant insects or other pests, cleanup was left for whoever could get up in the morning without falling over from a crippling hungover headache. “Besides,” Hancock had pointed out, “it’ll give us all something to do. Come on, I’ve been itching to shoot something for  _ weeks _ . Let ‘em come, I say!”

Even despite that, all good food was returned to the kitchen, while any garbage was at  _ least  _ gathered in one spot for easy disposal in the morning. Those who came individually by day left in groups by night, promising to watch each other’s backs as they returned to their camps some few miles away, or even to their settlements, if they were close enough. Kori had retired early, exhausted by all of the socialization and needing to get Shaun to bed at a semi-decent time, but Preston and Nick took care of seeing everyone off and thanking them for coming. Then, one by one, the residents of Sanctuary retired to their own homes. Deacon and Mac were the last to turn in, having been too distracted sweet-talking each other to realize things had been quieting down. They stumbled down the streets together giggling and clutching at each other’s hips, drunkenly kissing and making promises they both knew they would be too tired to keep that evening.

By 1:30, Sanctuary was quiet once again. Just how Danse knew it to be.

He lay in his room, hands beneath his head as he stared at the mottled pattern of the ceiling. Despite his own desire to sleep, it simply would not come to him. All he could do was replay the dance between him and Kori over and over in his mind. The closeness of their bodies without the promise of sex. The wine on her breath washing over his skin, his neck, as she pulled him along, the weight of her body as he held her high. The flow of her blue Minuteman coat as they spun and chased each other. The glitter and glow in her eyes as her blood started properly pumping for the first time in months.

It was the most alive she had looked since they had infiltrated the Institute.

With a sigh, Danse moved his hands from behind his head, stroking two fingers along the deep scar of his left arm, hoping the motion would soothe and lull him to sleep.

Not one minute later, there was a knock at his door. Danse startled at the noise, blinking the haze of calm from his mind rapidly, before slowly getting to his feet.

He’d done the most work on this house out of anyone-- the boards he’d placed on the windows months ago had been replaced with shutters, and nearly every hole in the walls had been boarded up or filled. So he didn’t think twice about walking through his house in nothing but a pair of pants, and who could really blame him for opening the door in anything less at this time of night?

And so Danse opened the front door, and still had to take a step back in surprise.

Kori leaned heavily on one crutch, worrying her lower lip, but she snapped up to attention when Danse opened the door. She’d traded out her Minuteman coat for a simple T-shirt and jeans, and as Danse looked at her, he realized her hair was wet, sticking to her forehead. She’d showered.

“Kori?” Danse looked around, peering out from the edges of the doorframe into the night. So far, nothing had gotten into the garbage, and the streets were quiet and calm. “What are you doing here? Is everything alright?”

Kori clicked her teeth together. “Yes. Or… no. No?”

The ex-Paladin jolted his head back and furrowed his brow. “Is Shaun alright?”

“Oh yeah, yeah, he’s… at home. Sleeping. Uh, Codsworth is watching him. He’s fine. I didn’t leave him alone, I swear.”

“Okay, I believe you. Not that I didn’t, or wouldn’t have.” Danse leaned against the doorframe, before standing up straight again not even two seconds later. “Are you sure you’re okay? It’s late, it’s not safe for you to be out and about.”

The vault dweller opened and shut her mouth a few times, before sighing through her nose. The blush that crept across her cheekbones finally clued Danse into what she wanted, and his shoulders tensed. He wasn’t opposed. Not by any means. It was likely he never would be. He was only worried about his emotions overpowering him and making him do something he would regret. But if it was something Kori needed in order to feel okay after everything that had befallen her, he would more than eagerly supply.

“Do you want to come in?” he inquired softly, and Kori perked up immediately now that he had caught on. He stepped aside to allow her space, and he closed the door quickly behind her.

The next thing he knew, he was being pressed against the shelving next to the door, and on his gasp of surprise, Kori swallowed the sound with her lips against his, crashing and desperate. Danse recovered quickly, reciprocating the motion and shuddering at the heat of her smaller body against his, even as his hands were firmly grasping the shelves behind him. Kori’s hands grasped at his hips, pulling them flush against hers as she continued to maul him with her lips.

Danse’s hand came to grasp at the back of Kori’s head when her lips moved from his lips to his jaw, biting and kissing as she ground minutely against him. When her hands slipped up his shirt, he jolted at the cool metal of her left hand. Warning signs flashed in his mind, but he pushed them down immediately. This was  _ Kori _ , not some skeletal Gen-1 Synth.

When he finally moved to place his hands on Kori’s hips, her breath left her like she’d been punched, and her eyelids fluttered. A moment later, she recomposed herself, and took a hold of Danse by his shirt. He only had one second to drink in the fire raging through her green eyes before she pulled him down for another rough kiss, and Danse grunted when she bit his bottom lip and pulled, releasing it with a snap.

“ _ Bed _ ,” she snarled, slotting a thigh between Danse’s legs and thrusting it against him.

Shakily, Danse nodded, and he picked her up by her thighs. She wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck, and continued to suck marks and bites into the sensitive skin of his neck. As Danse carried her through his home, all he could think about was how  _ light _ and  _ fragile  _ Kori felt in his arms, after the significant weight she had lost during her period of inactivity. His arms shook at the thought, but his strength didn’t waver.

When he placed her down on the bed like she was glass, Kori scooted away from him. Before he could crawl on after her, she instructed him, “Sit against the headboard. I want to ride you.”

_ Fuck _ . That was a nice idea. Danse scrambled to get into position, and not a moment later Kori was between his legs, yanking down his pants and his underwear all at once. His half-hard cock bobbed free, and when her right hand wrapped around him, he tilted his head back and groaned at the sweet friction. Again, Kori took advantage of the situation, and moved to nip into the crook between Danse’s neck and collarbone. She let go of him momentarily to toss his shirt off and over his head, but before she could get back to touching him, the ex-Paladin surged forwards, throwing off her own shirt and kissing her in a slow, sensual tangle of tongue.

Kori’s breath trembled against his lips when he pulled away, and Danse’s fingers trailed along the hem of her pants in silent question. She answered by thrusting her hands into them herself, and together they pulled the offending garment down and off of her hips.

“Come here,” Danse whispered, taking a hold of the woman now as bare as he and placing her in his lap. He reached down between them and teased open her lips, heart vibrating wildly at finding she was already wet. Two fingers ran up and down her slit, and Kori quivered at the featherlight touch. She thrust against his fingers, craving more friction, and Danse took mercy and rubbed little circles into her nub.

“Danse…” The vault dweller covered her mouth with her left hand, hiding the little noises slipping past, while the other reached down to stroke his dick again. Their hands brushed and collided awkwardly, but neither would relent in touching the other.

“I’ve got you,” Danse whispered, bucking up a little into Kori’s grasp, before gently batting her hand away from him. “Let me-- let me take care of you, first.”

Kori made a small sound of protest, but it quickly faded away as Danse rubbed his slick fingers up and down her clitoris. Her hips trembled under the onslaught of sensation, and she whimpered when his free hand reached up to play with a breast.

“Let me take care of you,” he repeated, staring up into Kori’s eyes. “You deserve this. Just let go, baby.”

She hiccuped on a strange sound at the use of the pet name, still covering her mouth and rutting against Danse’s fingers. The ex-Paladin smiled up at her sweetly, heart panging painfully at the sight of her so undone, so vulnerable. He wanted, so badly, to hold her close in his arms as he touched her, opened her up for him, but that kind of intimacy would be hitting too close to where it hurt. So instead, he kissed one nipple tenderly, before saying:

“I won’t let you fall.”

His smile fell at once, however, when two tears slipped past her eyes, and she hid her face in his shoulder, shaking violently on a sob. Her hands wrapped around his shoulders as if she was being torn away, and Danse stopped touching her immediately.

“Kori?” His hands hovered helplessly, for a moment, before he took a hold of her arms, one metal and one flesh. He didn’t pull her away, though, just held her, hoping to ground her.

She was mumbling something into his skin, breath heaving and hitching, and it took a moment for him to understand what she was saying.

“I’m sorry,” she gasped, rubbing her wet eyes into his skin and sniffling. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to. Fuck, Danse, I’m sorry.”

Hurriedly, Danse hushed her, sitting up straighter and holding her back in his hands to support her. “Hey, deep breaths. Breathe, Kori, what are you talking about?”

The vault dweller pulled her face away from Danse’s shoulder, and wiped at her eyes before crashing into Danse with a kiss with ferocity and passion he had never felt from her before. It was not rough like her kisses from earlier, but rather, it was so heavily emotionally charged, desperate in a need for  _ him _ , not just his body, that it stole the breath from his lungs and made his heart shatter.

When Kori pulled back and away, she dropped her head, unable to look Danse in the eye as she continued to cry.

“I love you,” she blurted out. “And I didn’t mean to. I promise I didn’t mean to, Danse. I tried so hard not to fall in love with you and I couldn’t  _ not _ \--”

“How long,” he asked, sure that his voice came out too loud, too demanding, but he could scarcely breathe as it was. Forget about moving an inch, forget about the position they were in, his hard cock against his stomach. Kori said  _ those words _ , the very three words he could not bring himself to say even when it had mattered most. Controlling his volume was the last thing on his mind. “How long, Kori.”

The vault dweller bit her lip, hands curled close to her body as she looked away.

“Since you stood by my side when I burned Shaun’s crib.” She shook her head, and hissed out through her teeth. “I  _ swear  _ to you, Danse, I never meant for this to--”

Rough hands came to grasp at the sides of Kori’s head, and he forced her to look into his eyes before capturing her lips in his. His breath left his nose in a shaking sigh, and his heart would have flown out of his mouth if he hadn’t been kissing Kori with everything he had left.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” he gasped out at length, hands desperately petting the sides of Kori’s face. He searched her eyes for anything that could have hinted that she was lying, that this was some sick joke and she would laugh as she stood and left him. “How could you be in love with… well, a machine?”

“I don’t care what I was taught. You’re more important to me than any of that.” Kori hiccuped again. “I-- I get it if you don’t feel the same way, if you want things to stay platonic--”

“Fuck!” Danse cursed, laughing wildly as the first few tears slipped past his own eyes. He kissed Kori again, desperate to keep her like this, close to him in case this was all a dream. “Fuck, no Kori. No! No, please, I-- I love you, too. I do. Fuck. I’m sorry, I didn’t think-- I was too afraid, I didn’t want to ruin what we had.”

“You--?” Pear-green eyes widened, and one flesh and one metal hand clung to the sides of Danse’s face, their foreheads resting together. “Since when--”

“A long time, too long,” Danse laughed, wiping away stray tears from Kori’s face. “I-- I didn’t admit it to myself until just before Haylen told me about what I was, but it was long before that I think.”

“You fucking idiot!” Kori smiled in relief, kissing Danse all over his mouth and sobbing all the while. “You fucking  _ idiot _ . Paladin  _ Dense _ .”

“I know, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I should have spoken up. I’m sorry, Kori.”

But she only shook her head, and kissed him long and hard, before laughing again. Kori moved her hands to Danse’s back, and tried to pull him down on top of her, but Danse held her fast.

“Now hold on,” he chuckled, reaching up to wipe away some of his own tears, “you said you wanted to ride me. If you don’t mind, I’m still very much interested in that idea, unless you’re not interested in sex anymore.”

Kori snickered, and wiped at her eyes with the palm of her hand. “I’m always interested in sex, Danse. But right now, more specifically, I’m interested in  _ you _ , and your arms holding me close while you fuck into me.”

Danse nodded, but it was brief, before he spoke up timidly. 

“Can I make love to you instead? It just… I wouldn’t feel right being rough with you after knowing how we feel about each other now. After everything we’ve been through, I just…”

Kori slipped a hand behind Danse’s back, urging him to slide down the bed until she was on top of him. At first she said nothing, but the first gentle slide of her lips against his-- the softest kiss they’d shared all night-- was response enough.


	32. Chapter 32

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys, gentle reminder to check out the [writing requests page](http://dylawa.tumblr.com/writing-requests). I have a part time job that pays quite well, but a majority of it goes to college, and I really would like to be self-sustaining by this time next year. If you can't really check out the writing requests page, please at least spread the word. If you want details on my home situation before spreading the word, feel free to message my tumblr. Thank you.
> 
>  **EDIT** : I did in fact receive two Ko-fi's! I'm so sorry I missed them! Thank the both of you so much!
> 
>  
> 
> _I changed up this message and a few others a little bit due to some info I found out regarding links, finances, and AO3._

“No way.”

“Yes I  _ heard  _ them,” Piper insisted, slapping her hands excitedly on the table she was sharing with a bruised Hancock and Cait and a very sleepy Curie. The Ghoul, despite his swollen eye, was looking to Piper with astonishment at her claims. Cait just looked like she didn’t believe Piper at all.

“I heard them,” she insisted. “They were crying and laughing and calling each other idiots and dumbasses, and I may not have had many partners, but I know what sex sounds like. I’m no bumbling little girl.”

“Kori… I dunno, Danse doesn’t seem like her type to me.” The Ghoul scratched at his chin. “The whole soldier spiel, the ‘mission above all else’ mindset--”

“Hancock, her pre-war husband was  _ literally  _ an American soldier.”

“Well, fuck, yeah, and God bless that guy, but Danse? He’s a war dog that got kicked like a puppy onto the street. How do we know this isn’t just some sympathy fuck?”

“Oh  _ please _ ,” Cait scoffed. “Kori doesn’t ‘sympathy fuck’. Besides, if that was what was going on, this would have started  _ before _ last night. The only person who would need a sympathy fuck at this point is Kori!”

“Okay, but let’s say this  _ has  _ been going on for a while.” Piper held out her hands, as if gesturing for her listeners to brace themselves. “Let’s say that Kori and Danse have been casually fucking for a while now, but this is the first of any sort of love confession. What then?”

“You fucking kidding me?” Hancock puffed. “Danse is  _ not  _ the kinda guy to just fuck  _ whoever _ . He probably times his jerk-off sessions and keeps a record of how fast he can blow his load. It’s all about the  _ endurance _ . He wouldn’t have a casual fuck buddy,  _ especially  _ not someone like Kori. It’d ‘fuck with his primary directive’ or some other bullshit.”

“Danse may not be human,” Curie yawned, twirling her fork in her empty breakfast plate, “but he shares basic human function, and that includes lust and desire. Kori is a very attractive woman, and they have worked closely together for a very long time now. Who are we to say that some form of physical attraction has not developed?”

The Ghoul squinted over at Curie. “... you know somethin’ we don’t, sweetheart?”

But the Synth woman only stood, gathering her dishes and walking away.

“Hey, hey! Curie! Come ooonnn, don’t do this to us!”

It was at that point that MacCready stumbled over, still rubbing the sleep from his eyes. He nearly bumped into Codsworth, who was taking care of last night’s garbage. “What are you bitch-- er, whining about, Hancock? Did I kick your ass too hard last night?”

“No, that award would go to Cait, you scrawny twig. Piper claims she heard Kori and the Tin Can Man going at it last night.  _ Romantically _ .” He emphasised the statement with some kissing sound effects, and the Sniper screwed up his face.

“Gross, Hancock, I didn’t need that imagery.” MacCready screwed up his nose as he propped himself up against a pillar and tried to wake himself up further. “... did they though?”

“You bet they did,” Piper snorted.

“You don’t got physical proof!” Hancock shouted. “Kori’s got better standards than some shitty ex-BOS soldier!”

“Oh, come on,” Mac balked. “Danse isn’t  _ that  _ bad. I mean… he used to be, sure, but he got better. So what? I mean, I’d have concerns if they’d been fu--  _ sleeping  _ together,  _ before _ his banishment, but I mean, what’s the big deal now?”

“It just doesn’t sit right with me. I mean-- look, I want Kori to be happy, alright? We all want her to be happy. But she  _ just  _ found her son… technically… just got her life all sorted out… adding a boyfriend to the equation  _ this quick  _ feels to me like she’s trying to fill the father role for Shaun as quick as she can. That ain’t fair to any of them.”

“I mean… you’ve got a point, but Danse is a smart guy. He wouldn’t jump into anything he doesn’t feel like he’s ready for.” Piper folded her arms and glanced back at Danse’s house. So far, neither he  _ nor  _ Kori had emerged yet, and she was waiting for the both of them to prove to Hancock she wasn’t making any of this up. “It’s only unfair if Danse is feeling forced into it, or if Shaun doesn’t want him as his dad and Kori ignores him.”

“Chances are, both of that’s gonna happen.”

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Nick called from a couple tables over, still nose-deep in his newspaper. He had barely spoken two words to anyone all morning as he had walked past Piper’s conversation, but currently, he was hiding a smile by scratching at his nose. “Danse is a noble man, Hancock. Both of you are, just in different ways. And Kori ushered in a brave new world, all on her own. She had our help, but she was the catalyst that started it all. She’s going to need someone to keep her from flying off the rails.”

“Hmm. I think he’s doing more than just keeping her from flying off the rails,” Piper mused as she stared at Danse’s house again. “I think the train hasn’t even left the station.”

“What are you guys talking about?”

Mac, Piper, Cait, and Hancock all jumped at the sound of Kori’s voice behind them. When they whirled around to face her, she was in her trademark pose-- titled head, hip jutting out, hands placed there firmly. At the strange reactions from everyone, she arched an eyebrow, and Shaun bolted up to her and attached himself to her waist.

“Where did you come from?” Piper squeaked, face turning pink while Nick tried to hide his snickering in the background.

“Vault 111,” she said with a shrug. “Shaun wanted to see his dad before I got to work on disposing the body.”

Cait stopped mid-sip of her drink so she wouldn’t choke. “You let Shaun see his dad’s  _ corpse?! _ ”

“I’m a big kid!” the boy insisted, pouting and stomping his foot. “I wanted to know what happened to my mom and my dad. I wanted to see him. I… I only cried a little. I’m fine!” Kori wrapped an arm around her son's shoulders.

“He knew what he was getting into,” Kori comforted Cait. “I warned him the whole walk there about what he would see. He insisted we keep going.”

The Irish woman relaxed a bit at that.

“We’ll finally have the funeral later this week,” Kori informed those present. As she spoke, Danse emerged from his house, yawning and scratching his hair as he finished tightening a scarf around his neck, presumably to combat the cooling weather. Piper frowned, and Hancock leaned back in his seat with a smirk. “No one’s obligated to come, since none of you knew Nate, but it’d be appreciated. Then after that, I’m destroying the mechanism to the entrance to the vault. No one needs to go back in there for… well, anything.”

“We’ll support you through anything, Blue,” Piper responded to that. “I’ll definitely be there at the funeral.”

“Well, fuck, now I’ll look like an asshole if I don’t go,” Hancock grunted. Cait shook her head.

“Can’t do it. Sorry, Kori. I don’t wanna be ten feet near a body that’s been decomposin’ for almost a year now.”

“And that’s understandable,” the vault dweller nodded, rubbing a hand through Shaun’s hair. “I won’t blame anyone for not coming. It’s just something I have to do, or it won’t sit right with me for the rest of my life. But no one has to come. I understand that it's... strange, after all this time. I hold no ill feelings towards anyone who declines.”

Danse finally walked into the pavilion, grabbing a muttfruit and biting into the sickly juicy fruit. He gave Dogmeat a pat on the head as the pup rushed over to greet the ex-Paladin, and Shaun ran after the dog as he ran away down Sanctuary's streets. Kori called after him and demanded he stay to eat breakfast, but the boy was off like a lightning bolt.

“Morning,” Danse said to everyone as Kori quieted down, and he jolted and let out an unmanly yelp when Deacon smacked his ass as he walked past. Hancock coughed out his drink, pounding his fist on the table as he struggled to breathe while the others cackled as well. “Well, good morning to you too, Deacon.”  Piper squinted at Danse as he came to stand by her side. 

“Are Preston and Curie awake yet?” Danse asked everyone.

“You just missed Curie,” Nick called from his individual table. “Haven’t seen Preston yet, but then again, he went a little hard on the moonshine as the party came to a close last night.”

“Should we maybe check on him?”

“Nah, he’s fine,” Hancock insisted, before dropping the bomb, unable to restrain himself any longer. “Hey, so did you and Kori fuck last night or what?”

All around rose varying cries of indignation, second hand embarrassment, and disbelief, hands all pointing at each other while Danse stood still, face growing redder and redder.

“You can’t just fucking  _ ask _ \--”

“-- Kori is  _ right there  _ you stupid--”

“Hey we’re  _ all  _ dying to know, so I grew a pair--”

“You  _ dense motherfucker-- _ ”

“You think we did  _ what _ \--”

“ _ Why are you  _ **_like_ ** _ this?! _ ”

“Can we get another bomb dropped on us?!”

Slowly, Nick folded up his newspaper. As everyone shouted and yelled at each other, he stubbed his cigarette, before standing and coming to stand next to Danse. Wordlessly, he tugged Danse’s scarf loose, revealing a gathering of bruises and hickeys all over his neck. Instantly, all conversation stopped as all eyes trained themselves on those purple and blue spots. Danse went rigidly still, his face completely scarlet by this point.

“About  _ time _ ,” Nick snorted, ruffling up Danse’s hair before tucking the scarf back into place. “So when’s the wedding?”

“I didn’t-- uh, these are--” Danse stammered and stuttered, but Kori swept in to save him.

“Very funny, Nick.” She placed her hands on her hips, before walking around to gather Danse in her arms. She let him hide his face in her neck, patting his back consolingly. “Let the poor guy have some time to process it. It was a split second confession last night.”

“ _ Ha! _ ” Piper pointed a finger into the bridge of Hancock’s nose. “I  _ told  _ you!”

“Fuck off!” Hancock barked as he slapped Piper's arm away, then folding his arms and huffing.

“I can’t do this.” MacCready threw up his arms and stormed off to find where Deacon had gotten off to. “When you all grow up, call me back!”

Nick reared his head back as they all watched the sniper take his leave from the group. “Speak for yourself,” he muttered, shoving his hands into his trench coat pockets. He turned around to address Kori and Danse. “As I was saying, it’s about time you two finally got together. I was starting to worry I’d have to play matchmaker, or worse, just tell Kori how you felt about her myself, Danse.”

“You wouldn’t have done that,” the ex-Paladin snickered from his hiding place in Kori’s right shoulder. He reached back to bat blindly at Nick, but the old android just stepped off to the side.

“Don’t test me on that, stud.” He smiled, but it was a nervous hesitant thing, small like a flower. “In all seriousness, I’m happy for you. I think it’s safe to say we all are. Just make sure you remember me when you need a clergy, yeah?”

Danse finally pulled himself out of Kori’s neck, rubbing his still pink cheeks and shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Nick. I’m afraid you won’t get to do that.”

The old bot furrowed his brow, crestfallen. A moment later, his cooling fans kicked into high gear suddenly as both Kori and Danse smooched him, one pair of lips on each cheek of his cracked and worn face. There was even a small spark in his neck, and he stumbled back in surprise.

“You can’t be the clergy if you’re one of the people getting married,” Kori informed him with a tsk of her tongue, shaking her head.

Hancock, Cait and Piper all stared at the other three with wide, bewildered eyes. The Ghoul was the first to stand. “Okay. Shit. I need… I need… good job, but I need some Jet. Like, right now, this is… this is not how I thought my morning would go. I... okay...”

As the Ghoul stumbled off in a daze, Cait and Piper collected themselves, each congratulating the three of them. Kori and Danse beamed as they sandwiched Nick in between them, and the old Synth tipped his hat down over his head before hiding himself in the crook of Danse’s neck.

“You’re gonna make this old bot cry,” he mumbled into Danse’s shoulder as Cait and Piper walked away to give the new lovebirds some space. “When we talked about this being a three person affair, I didn’t actually think--”

“Kori still loves you,” Danse said to him. “She told me this morning, when I brought this up to her. And  _ I _ still love you. I always will. I wasn’t going to leave you behind, or leave you for Kori. You spoke for me first.”

“Oh yeah. Danse made it  _ very  _ clear that if it wasn’t going to be the three of us, there wasn’t going to be anything between me and him,” Kori informed Nick. “Things may have been moving too quick between you and me our first go around, Nick, but now that things have calmed down and we've both found ourselves a little better, I’m ready. This time, I’m ready. But if you’re not, we can wait.”

Nick pulled his head out of Danse’s neck, and turned to kiss Kori sweetly on her cheek.

“Don’t worry about it. I’m ready, too.”

 

* * *

 

Three days later, a Vertibird touched down just across the bridge into Sanctuary.

Shaun sat in the middle of the road, flinging up bits of concrete with his fingertips and making explosion sound effects, but his playing came to a halt when a shadow loomed over him. He glanced up timidly, the hulking man clearly some sort of threat, though the Sentry Bot hadn’t budged when the man had crossed into Sanctuary.

“Young man, I demand to speak with your mother.” His steel blue eyes bore down into the young boy’s umber ones relentlessly. Shaun hunkered down even further, looking like a frightened puppy.

“...  _ Mooommmmm? _ ” Shaun turned his head and whined towards the houses, still sitting on the ground. Elder Maxson simply stepped past him, and the two Brotherhood Knights followed closely behind.

“Stay close,” the Elder demanded. “We’re in unfamiliar territory here.”

As they proceeded down the street, Deacon, Cait, and Preston emerged from their respective homes, and came to intercept the Brotherhood leader. Deacon, being the closest, spoke first.

“Uh, hey, Maxson,” he called out, and even though the Elder did not stop walking, he did look back to the Railroad spy, indicating that he had heard him. “This isn’t your place to be. The Castle is one thing, but Sanctuary is  _ literally  _ Kori’s man cave. You don’t just waltz in like this.”

“If she made herself available, or came to the Prydwen like I had requested, I would not have to resort to such aggressive measures,” he huffed.

“Yeah, uh, you see, she was sort of  _ dead for two months _ , so if you could kindly  _ fuck out of here _ \--”

“Maxson?” Preston squinted from down the road, before rushing to intercept the man, joined by Cait at his side. “Hey, you can’t be here--”

“I demand to see Paladin Farnsworth,” he announced loudly, coming to a stop as Preston stood in front of him. “I had requested that she report the moment she had recovered, and yet I received news that she had come here instead. So, given her lack of formality towards me in the past, I have instead elected to come to  _ her _ . Now, where. Is. She.”

Cait clenched her fists, but before she could toss any hits, Preston placed a hand on her shoulder. Then, he turned and smirked at the Elder.

“You’re in luck. She’s in that house right to your left there. Go ahead and knock. She or one of her…  _ guests _ will answer.”

Cait stared at Preston with wide eyes, but Deacon’s snickering caught up their attention.  “Yeah. She’ll always make time for you, no matter what she’s up to.”

Maxson gave both the men suspicious glares, but did not question either of them. They had given him the information he wanted. He straightened himself out and marched up to the door, ignoring the shared snickering between the three residents. He knocked on the door roughly, a  _ rat-a-tat  _ that reverberated through the metal, and there was a yelp inside.

“ _ Sorry _ ,” someone muttered, “ _ got startled _ .”

Arthur arched an eyebrow.

“ _ You wanna get that, Danse? I’m a little preoccupied with our darling princess here. _ ”

“ _ Of course. Don’t get too wild without me. _ ”

Things were silent for a little longer, before there was a bolt being undone, and then the door swung open. Danse was only in a loose pair of pants, and when he saw who was standing at his door, his eyes went wide, and he promptly slammed the door shut.

Behind Arthur, the Knights snorted and snickered, but a quick wave of his hand cut them off. Angrily, he pounded on the door again. “I  _ demand  _ to speak with Paladin Farnsworth at once!” he barked.

The next time the door was opened, Arthur scowled in disgust when he was met with Nick Valentine. The old bot had discarded of his fedora and jacket somewhere, and the sleeves of his dress shirt were rolled up. He made himself comfortable, leaning against the door frame and pulling out a carton of smokes. He offered one to the man in front of him. “Want one?”

He wasn’t surprised when the box was slapped out of his hand. “Paladin Farnsworth.  _ Now _ .”

Nick shrugged, before pulling out a spare cigarette from his pocket. He placed it in his own mouth and lit it while the Elder fumed. Just before the man could get physically violent or angry again, Nick placated him. “She’s coming. She’s getting dressed. I’d invite you in, but uh, it's her house, and I don’t want to make any assumptions.”

“I am  _ perfectly fine _ right where I am,  _ thank you _ .”

“Sure, sure.” Nick nodded, and turned his head aside to blow out a plume of smoke. He eyed Maxson for one moment, before narrowing his eyes. “You know, I bet you’d be a  _ killer  _ if you ditched the beard. Makes you look twice your age, and not in a good way.”

Maxson’s eye twitched. His hand began to reach inside his coat pocket, likely for a weapon, but a moment later Kori stumbled up to the door. She nearly tripped outside, but Nick caught her, and she laughed, though it was a forced sound.

“Wow. Hey. Long time no see.” She smiled up to Arthur, though her eyes held no mirth. “Can I just say… concussions really fuck with your ability to remember things.”

The Elder made to reply to that statement, but his thoughts shorted out at the sight of bruises and hickeys on Kori’s neck, fresh and poorly hidden by her turtleneck sweater. He found himself unable to tear his eyes away momentarily, before clearing his throat and glancing away.

“I’ve come to give you your discharge papers,” he informed her curtly. He snapped his fingers, and one of the Knights stepped forwards with said papers in hand. The woman took them from him and looked them over, and Nick did the same over her shoulder.

“Wait a minute.  _ Honorable  _ discharge? I thought we agreed--”

“Your bravery and self-sacrifice at the Institute was more than ample enough to prove that, despite our differences, you still have a dedication to the better interests of humanity, and therefore, the Brotherhood of Steel. It seemed this would be the only adequate reparation we could provide, given that you have already taken care of your… injury.” He gestured vaguely to her left arm. “And quite brilliantly, I will admit.”

Kori and Nick stared at the papers together, before the vault dweller lifted her head and smiled. This time it was kind, though still strained.

“Thank you, Elder Maxson. This is… it’s more than I was expecting.”

Arthur nodded once, before clearing his throat. “Now, if you don’t mind, I wish to have a word with Danse alone, if he is available. This will be our only time to have this conversation, as the Brotherhood will be leaving the Commonwealth soon.”

Kori and Nick glanced to each other with a mixture of unease and annoyance, before Nick called back into the house. “Danse? Maxson wants you. Just say the word and I’ll call over the Sentry Bot.”

Reluctantly, Danse sighed, and walked around the corner, fully dressed this time.

“It’s fine,” he said to Kori and Nick. “You two head back inside. I won’t leave Sanctuary”

After a brief moment, Kori and Nick let Danse slip past the two of them, before closing the door softly. Danse stood before the Elder as proudly as he could. Instinct told him to salute, but he was no longer a soldier. It would only be seen offensive by the other man.

“Walk with me, Danse,” Maxson commanded. “At least, a reasonable distance away from earshot.”

Despite his trepidation, Danse acquiesced to the Elder’s request. He was thankful for the space that the Knights gave them, their presence making him fidgety and nervous. “So what is this about? I thought you wanted nothing more to do with an ‘abomination’ like me.”

Maxson did not turn to look directly at Danse. He only graced him with a glare out of the corner of his eye, his pace never faltering. “It seems that, in the heat of the moment, I allowed my emotions to dictate my actions more than my intelligence. That in itself is one mistake, but I believe the worst error I made was casting you aside despite your unwavering service, without allowing you the right to speak for yourself.”

“That wasn’t a mistake. I’m a Synth. According to the Codex--”

“The Codex is not absolute, Danse. The laws within are more guidelines than anything else. Though perhaps you may be right in that Synths do not deserve mercy, you are no ordinary Synth.”

“No, Arthur. I’m just like any other Synth.”

If the use of his first name bothered him any, Elder Maxson declined to comment on it. “Except you’re not. Perhaps your escape from the Institute and encounter with the Railroad was the same, but your actions after that have proven you are different. No other recruit in Brotherhood history has turned out to be a Synth except for you. You were, and now likely will be, the only Synth to have ever joined our ranks.”

“What does this have to do with anything? What do you want, Arthur?”

“Impatient?” The Elder stopped, and turned to face Danse at long last, hands clasped behind his back. “Given our current status, that is understandable, though disappointing. I have been doing some thinking, Danse. Despite your identity, your service has proven to be more valuable than any other, and with the Institute destroyed, you no longer pose a serious threat to our organization. Not to mention, your extended lifespan is tragic, yet marvelous in its own right. I came here not only to discharge Paladin Farnsworth from duty… but to extend the offer to you to rejoin our ranks as a fully re-instated Paladin.”

Shocked, Danse shook his head, wondering if he had heard the other man correctly. “Sir?”

At first, Arthur seemed ready to begin shouting at Danse, but his irked features quickly shifted into something softer. Something sadder. Something like regret.

“I miss you, Danse,” he confessed at length, and that revelation was even more shocking than the one before. “You were my most trusted soldier, and my best friend. It was a mistake to so hastily denounce your name and existence. Should you so desire, I would be more than happy to re-enlist you into our ranks.”

Danse felt sick with excitement, but also fear, and something else he couldn’t place yet, but it was on the tip of his tongue. He knew Arthur better than anyone, and the man was being genuinely honest. But…

“Sir, with all due respect, this seems like a personal decision, and not something the Brotherhood as a whole would approve of.”

“But I am Elder, am I not? My word is law.” Arthur arched an eyebrow at Danse. “I know what the Brotherhood meant to you. To have your service again would be the highest honor. We will be returning to the Capital Wasteland to resume operations from the Citadel. Unrest has been building, and tensions are high. Our return is necessary, and long overdue. Should you so desire, you may spend the remaining time here--”

“I’m not going.”

The Elder jerked his head back. “Pardon?”

Danse puffed out his chest, and stood tall. “Thank you, Arthur, but I’m not returning to the Brotherhood of Steel. I’ve done my duty as instructed, and despite it all, I was cast out unreasonably and unforgivably. I’ve been tolerant for too long. I can’t accept the way I was treated, and I apologize if that makes you upset.”

Sure enough, the Elder’s nostrils flared. “I am giving you a once in a lifetime opportunity. Those exiled or dishonorably discharged from the Brotherhood of Steel have  _ never  _ been given the option to return. You are throwing away a great opportunity.”

“Arthur, your ideologies have bled through the steel floors of the Prydwen and into the hearts of Squires, Scribes, Initiates, and Knights alike. And whether or not you can change that blood, the stains will remain in the rust. While you may approve of my return, others will not. Returning to the Brotherhood of Steel now, after everyone has been made aware of my true identity, would be dangerous.”

“If  _ anyone _ were to threaten your safety, I assure you, I would severely punish them--”

“But that’s not fair. That goes against what  _ you  _ taught them. What you taught  _ me _ .”

“Changes can be made--!”

“But not at the speed you’re pushing for.” Danse narrowed his eyes, and the look he gave Arthur was a cold one. “You don’t want me back because I was a good soldier. You want me to rejoin for purely selfish reasons. It took my banishment for me to realize it, but I was all you had, and now that I’m gone, you’re panicking. You’re alone. And maybe the friendship we had was mutual, once. Something even healthy. But coming back now… it wouldn’t be right. With my identity and your position of power in the Brotherhood, you would only use your power to force me to stay by your side.”

“How  _ dare  _ you!” Maxson shouted. “I’m giving you the chance of a lifetime! To stand by my side again! And you’d throw it away for these  _ disgusting  _ Commonwealth vermin!? Why would you do something so  _ idiotic!? _ ”

The Elder’s final word reverberated over the hills of Sanctuary, and settled in the earth around them. But when the silence became suffocating, Danse only smiled. Beamed, in fact, from ear to ear.

“Because I’m a Synth currently enjoying sexual congress out of wedlock with my Gen-2 Synth boyfriend, and my ex-Paladin of the Brotherhood of Steel girlfriend at the same time-- which you  _ rudely  _ intruded on, might I add-- while  _ she _ figures out how to run the Commonwealth from a distance and  _ he  _ is teaching me how to be a detective and secretary for his agency. We’ve also been in touch with a Commonwealth scientist/doctor about situating said Gen-2 Synth boyfriend with a Gen-3 body so he can ream my tight Synth ass and get pleasure out of it too. So if you don’t mind, I’m going to get back to that, because it’s the happiest I’ve been since I first joined the Brotherhood of Steel. To hell with the Codex, and Ad Victoriam, Arthur.”

Danse patted a hand on the stunned Elder’s shoulder, before brushing past him. He saluted the two equally shocked and disgusted knights, before leaving them to process his words alone. As Danse headed back up the hill towards Kori’s house, a little hand tugged on his. Shaun looked up to the other man, and Danse took a hold of the little boy’s hand as they walked.

“What’s congress?” little Shaun asked, and Danse chuckled and ruffled his hair.

“The act of coming together. Like a group of people. Why don’t you go find Hancock? Your mother and Nick and I are almost finished with our adult time.”

“Okay. Hey, Danse? You’re pretty cool. And my mom likes you, too. You’re not gonna go anywhere with that Elder Maxson guy, are you?”

“Don’t worry, Shaun. I told him I would  _ never  _ leave you or your mother. He didn’t like it very much.” Danse glanced back, and was relieved to see that Arthur was storming out of Sanctuary. Hopefully, this would be the final time Danse would ever see him. “But you don’t have to worry about him anymore. None of us do.”

“Whew! That’s a relief. He’s just a big baby, isn’t he?”

“Yes, Shaun. Elder Maxson is a big baby.”

 

* * *

 

“You  _ said  _ that!? To Arthur fucking Maxson!?”

Danse nodded, and Kori howled with laughter, rocking into him and clapping her hands like an excited seal. The ex-Paladin wrapped his arm around her shoulder and nuzzled into her neck, causing her to laugh even harder, as they watched the sun set over Sanctuary from the garage of the Red Rocket.

“ _ Christ _ , Danse! I never thought you had it in you.”

“Well, in light of recent events, I’ve come to understand your own hatred of the man. Took me too long, I’m ashamed to admit. Even after my banishment, I still tried to hold on to the hope that there was some semblance of a good person in him. Sadly, my hopes were ill-advised.”

“Ill-advised by who?”

Danse laughed lightly, though sadly. “My own heart. This heart that wants to believe in the best in people no matter what. Even those I had been trained to despise.”

The vault dweller smiled sweetly, pulling away from Danse and punching him lightly in the arm. “I will forever be grateful Maxson didn’t brainwash you past the point of saving.”

“I’ll be forever grateful that you saved me before I couldn’t be.”

“That wasn’t just me, Danse.”

The ex-Paladin sniffed. His allergies always were worse this time of year. “You’re absolutely right, but the role you played was integral in my change into who I am now. Had you not solicited me, I doubt our dynamic would have been as strong, and we wouldn’t be here having this conversation. Though, yes, you absolutely weren’t alone in your efforts.”

Almost as if on Cue, Nick stepped over the hill into Sanctuary and began to descend towards the two. He flicked a cigarette away and smiled as he shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m not intruding on anything, am I?”

“You’re never intruding,” Danse insisted, and he scooted over away from Kori and patted the spot he had vacated. “It’s your turn in the middle. Kori and I were just reminiscing.”

The old bot settled down with a grunt, and then Kori and Danse were immediately surrounding him, wrapping their arms around him. Danse buried himself into Nick’s neck, while Kori kissed him on the forehead, and he laughed happily.

“Spoiling me much?”

“Mmm, wrap your arm around me and  _ then  _ see how much we can ‘spoil’ you,” Danse teased, purring into Nick’s neck.

Despite the ex-Paladin’s warning, Nick did just that. Kori settled into his lap, draping both her legs over Nick and Danse. “One of these days, you’ll take a seat, and my legs will pop right out of their sockets.”

“You’re sturdier than that,” Kori tsked, shaking her head like a chiding mother.

“Yeah, well, don’t test that statement too extensively, doll.”

They shared a laugh over that, before Nick sighed and leaned back.

“So what were you guys talking about, then?”

“About how Danse used to be an insufferable asshole and I just could not  _ stand  _ to be around him,  _ ever _ , I  _ never  _ included him in  _ anything _ \--”

“You stop that!” Danse shouted, shaking Kori playfully. Nick leaned even farther back, laughing in minor panic.

“Hey now! I’m an innocent bystander! Don’t you two drag me into this!”

Danse let Kori go shortly after that, grinning from ear to ear. “I was  _ ill-informed _ . There is a difference.”

“Oh, tomato, tomahto.” Kori blew air out of her lips, and waved Danse off before wrapping her arms around Nick’s neck. “Come on, Nick, side with me here.”

“I  _ told  _ you, I’m an innocent bystander. I plead the fifth.”

“You  _ know  _ I’m right.”

“You have valid points, but that doesn’t make you  _ right _ .”

“Oh? What valid points?”

“Danse was an asshole, but he wasn’t  _ insufferable _ . And that last statement about never including him is a flat out  _ lie _ . Weren’t you a lawyer, Farnsworth? You should know the consequences of lying.”

By that point, Danse was clutching his side in laughter. “Don’t talk about me like I’m not here!”

Kori and Nick grinned at each other, before surging forwards and kissing Danse on his forehead together. The ex-Paladin’s laughter was cut short, and his deer-in-the-headlights look caused the both of them to devolve into a giggling fit.

“Will that ever  _ not  _ catch you off guard, Dansey?” Kori teased.

At the nickname, Danse blushed. “As a solider, I’ve been trained to adapt. Though, some scenarios remain more… startling than others… I will persevere.”

“Mhmm, sure, we’ll see about that.” Nick teased Danse, before his mood shifted and when he turned to look up at Kori again, his eyes were filled with pride. “We haven’t gotten much of a chance to talk about what you did three months ago at the Institute, Kori. It took a lot of guts to do what you did, taking them down like that. I know it couldn’t have been easy.”

The vault dweller merely shrugged, still smiling from their earlier conversations. “It had to be done.”

“You’ll get no argument from me. Still, it’s hard to wrap your head around. A world without the Institute lurking in the shadows. But that’s the life the people of the Commonwealth will get to lead now”

“Nick’s right, Kori. It appears that the Commonwealth is about to enter a new era of peace thanks to you. What you’ve done will be felt for years to come; it’s destined to become a part of history. A tale of a lone soldier who made this land a better place. A place where people no longer have to live in fear, but instead, live in peace. The Commonwealth is safe because you chose to take a leap of faith and make a difference.”

Danse smiled into Nick’s shoulder when Kori squeezed his arm and said, “I didn’t do it alone. It would have been impossible without your guys’s help.”

“And I wouldn’t even be alive without yours.” Danse pulled his head away from Nick’s neck, and tilted his head up for a kiss from Kori, a long, slow, lingering, passionate thing, filled with hope and emotion to make up for all of the lost time. “I’d say that makes us even.”

“Sure, sure,” Nick chuckled. “But we both know without you, Kori, none of this would’ve ever been possible. This is a brave new world you’ve ushered in, but I suppose it’ll do.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing,” the vault dweller pointed out.

“No, not bad. Just new. And we all know that when you’re faced with something new, there’s a long time where you’re fumbling with it, and you don’t know what to do. Preferably, we’d all already know how to go from here, but we don’t. Raiders can’t feed off of fear like they used to. People are banding together to take out the filth, like Feral Ghouls and hostile Super Mutants alike. And while it’s a start, in the long run, we have no idea where this newfound freedom from fear will lead us.”

Kori pursed her lips, before staring outside of the Red Rocket garage and towards the setting sun, the light illuminating her features like a phoenix reborn anew.

“I know where it will take us. But maybe we’ll need a push in the right direction. And whether for better or for worse, I’m here to make that push.”

Danse sat straighter, and gently titled Kori’s face to look at him, the darkness of the garage casting the left side of her face in shadow. “If you’ll still have me by your side, I’d be honored to accompany you.”

“I’d follow both of you anywhere,” Nick added. “Just say the word, and I’ll be there.”

And Kori beamed that blinding smile of hers, resting her scarred temple against Nick’s forehead. She chuckled as he smooched her cheek, and her right hand smoothed down the side of Danse’s face.

“I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's all she wrote.
> 
> Thank you for reading and commenting. It's likely things never would have gotten this far or finished without your guys's comments.
> 
> Unfortunately, I only have smutty plans after this for this group. And those, too, will be coming out far more slowly as I finish up a seven year long project of mine. It's been a blast, but with work and college bogging me down, and my interest in drawing getting rekindled, I don't anticipate being able to write much in the near future, unless it's for requests.
> 
> But again, thank you so much for your support. Remember, I have [writing requests](http://the-female-gaymer.tumblr.com/writing-requests) over on my main, which could help with encouraging more writing, so if you're interested, please give me a follow over there.


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